Angela J. Hill

…and I’m sure we’re not done with it.

This time I decided to shoot from the inside, though.

Looking up at St. Giles’s Cathedral in Edinburgh–I love the contrast in this shot. Not HDR, by the way.

A lock called “Union”?

You can see all of me and half of Vivi in Kandra’s eye!

Everyone seems to be posing for me in this one. I think they were just waiting for me to finish my photo so they could take one–don’t think they knew my photo was of them.

Vivi loves jumping. Vivi loves her poncho. Vivi loves jumping in her poncho.

Liberation appears to be closed up.

Interesting thing here: 52 is a yellowy-orange color, which looks really nice in my mind with that blue on the wall.

Practiced my panning shots as we drove down the road…makes for an interesting miniaturized effect!

Could the whole place just stop being so picturesque? I mean really.

This was a few minutes after the swan attacked me.

On the train on the way back…had about four seconds to snap this as the train sped by the trees and the sun went down.

Got away unscathed - but this is the danger of wide angle lenses: I didn’t realize how close, or how BIG, this swan was until it was about 6 inches from me and ready to defend its little…uh…swanlings?

We stayed at a great riad–the rooms were beautiful and we really made use of the plunge pool over the course of the trip. When it’s 111 degrees, a pool seems to just suck the heat right out of one’s body.

The first morning I woke up, I headed out near the pool for breakfast. I wore white linen and cotton pretty much the whole trip, and when I sat down and looked across the pool I thought of a line from The Solitaire Mystery–something about a character “being drawn there by her own reflection.”

Up closer:

It’s taking a long time to get through editing these photos so they may come a few at a time…

Marrakech was astounding, outstanding, overwhelming…and it will certainly take a little while to get through the photos, mostly because it’s just going to take a little while to recover and unwind. But this is my very favorite so far–and one of the first that I really want to get a big print of. More to come…

I know I just posted the whole album, but after having a few days to sit on it, there are a couple of shots I wanted to put here…to get them out of my system before I go to Marrakesh (tonight!) and to make them available if you don’t feel like watching a whole flash album.

Kids jumping off a diving platform. I saw the platform from a distance and knew I couldn’t wait to get up close, and it sure paid off.

The ruins by the main old town square. I just love the sun on the orange chairs. I sat near there and ate ice cream more times than I care to admit.

This was some sort of police building just around the tip of the peninsula from the sea organ.

Impossible to choose a favorite from this series…but I want to buy bubble guns for all of the kids I know, and most of the adults. Note also that this is severly underexposed, on purpose, to keep the kids in silhouette and show the depth of color in the sky.

Looking at this photo makes me feel nervous. Taken from the street on the top of the old town wall. I had to crop into this, but that was my plan when I shot it (lens just wasn’t long enough)–so to expose the interior a bit, I had to drastically overexpose the rest of the shot. Most of that got cropped off, though.

The woman in this photo is such a surprise. And, there’s just something about that bird in the next one…

This was an advertisement pasted to a door in a back alley. Love the juxtaposition of the locks, bars, girl in her underwear, and phrase “women’secret”.

One of the floors in the church tower. I climbed to the top via that staircase as the sun was starting to go down.

And finally, a girl watching the sunset. Everyone was out, of course…the sunset takes a nice long time this time of year and it’s completely beautiful with all the boats going by.

Less than 48 hours, more than 2,000 photos, edited down to under 60. I am a little bit in love with each of these.

That last shot, by the way, is literally everyone in the tiny Zadar airport watching the first half of the World Cup game before 90% of us boarded a flight to London. There are also lots more photos–graffiti, doors, locks, more beach handball and tango–here.

The narrative of my weekend would include the following sentences:

My sunglasses offered little protection against the sun and none against the wind as I crossed the airstrip to board my flight to Zadar.

My seat companion, a beautiful lingerie designer from Australia, introduced me to her Italian boyfriend when we landed.

I’ve never found it so hard to get away from an airport. The taxi drivers price gouged mercilessly and the bus was nowhere in sight. Just then, a yellow ladybug landed on my hand, and I found a native Croatian to share a taxi with.

The auras were interesting, but the increasing headache promised to be blinding. An enormous breakfast and 3 cups of strong coffee in quick succession managed to stave off the migraine.

A handsome beach handball player from Zagreb took that opportunity to strike up a conversation.

The Adriatic was almost as blue as my toenail polish when I dipped my feet in.

Normally I would have been irritated to clean ice cream out of my viewfinder, but as this was the best ice cream I’d ever eaten, I didn’t care much. I did have to go back to the ice cream stand for seconds in the evening to be sure it was worth it…you know, for science. It was.

The leaf floated just past my face and landed at my feet.

Then I awoke in the grass to the deep, ephemeral breathing of the sea organ.

I wanted badly to ask for a photograph, but despite my smiles and attempts at communication, the old woman just squinted at me through her one eye. I was pretty sure it was an evil one.

Around 6 I decided to find a place to sleep. You can leave your bags here, the girl said. Oh, I said, I don’t have any. Traveling light.

I was tremendously glad I had started climbing when I did. 5 minutes later and I would have been inside the church tower when the bell chimed, instead of out overlooking the square.

The flower petal floated just past my face and landed at my feet.

Two burly men grinned as they shot into the crowd of children…with bubble guns.

The smell of cured meats permeated the tent.

The tango dancing went on long past midnight.

This town is quite religious. On Sunday morning, only the churches and ice cream shops are open.

The feather floated just past my face and landed at my feet.

I was glad to see the snail farmers again the next day.

(So basically, I ignored the press pass and went to Croatia instead. Photos coming soon…and next weekend: Marrakesh!)

…from one of my photos!

I took this on Portobello Road a week or so ago. I loved the subject matter but I wasn’t at all happy with the angle or composition of the photo–it was crowded and there were buildings and basically it just wasn’t possible to get the shot I wanted. But I love what Nidhi did with it!

My image:

…and her sketch!

One of the many great things about this is that she pretty much made the shot I had in my mind. Hurray! Two art forms, two artists, working together…

It wasn’t such a great day for them, obviously. But we still had a great barbecue complete with potato salad, bubbles, sparklers, and even roasting marshmallows over the grill to make s’mores. The kids were beyond cute with the bubbles.

Here’s why it pays to use a fast shutter speed:

It’s a photo extravaganza around here. And by “here”, I mean wherever I happen to be.

Love the symmetry here; I took this with a longish shutter (around 1/15) from inside a bar, looking out. Had to sit three of us on the same side of our table to make this happen, but the people outside never noticed.

In Waterloo station–loved the shadows cast by the sun through the translucent roof.

Our waitress at a Korean BBQ place the other night:

I was hoping to go somewhere this weekend, but allergies and a cold combined really got the better of me. So instead, one more weekend in London.

Unfortunately I’m having serious computer issues and can’t even deal with RAW files right now. I finally set my camera to shoot RAW + JPG–and I guess I’ll have the source files handy to go back to later. Better than nothing?

110 is the perfect number to describe this scene, and I love it when that happens:

At the Tate Modern: