Angela J. Hill

I finally came up with a new technique for representing the numbers. For awhile I’ve wanted to put numbers on top of the textures I’m painting; but the numbers really need to be flat, and therefore rigid; in addition, it needs to be doable in a timeframe that will not send me to crazytown. Anyway, after considering a plethora of foams and plastics and combinations thereof, it finally occurred to me: balsa wood.

The biggest problem with this method is that balsa wood is happy to break in the east-west direction; so the number 7 kept breaking at its tiny neck. I have one intact and two broken; hoping I can work around that. Now the numbers are getting painted (black). The edges will wind up white, and then they’ll be affixed to the painting.

Driving around in San Francisco over the weekend, I stumbled upon this super-ultra-geometric parking garage. Certainly these aren’t great standard architecture shots, but with shapes like this, at this time of day, with this kind of light, abstract is the way to go…

I should add that these are all color images and have had only very minor contrast adjustments applied to the RAW files.

My buddies Monsters are not Myths played at the Make-Out Room this weekend. Great venue, but photographically it’s kind of weird. The stage is great (and I could roam as I pleased), particularly because there are two levels (so the drummer and bass player were elevated–much better for photos), but the lightinng is so predominantly red that I couldn’t even pick up much of anything in the green and blue channels unless I lit with a flash, which was kind of strange against everything else being red.

I used two different setups: ambient light shot with an 85mm f/1.2 wide open, and my 17-35 f/2.8 with a flash triggered wirelessly. The ambient light stuff was cool–but with that low depth of field, in that low light, it was hard to keep focus. I had to keep switching to manual which has limited results. Still managed to get some good shots:

Couple of classy black and white shots–

Switched to the flash/wide angle for the rest of the show…

Saturday, Emily and I did a shoot for our friends at Array Interactive. We needed to get some standard headshots, but their direction was “we want to look cool”.

We shot in two locations: the San Jose Diridon train station (for their cement, hard-cornered tunnel and for a “going places” feel I wanted to try), and the top floor of a parking structure in downtown San Jose for the views and urban feel.

The headshots turned out nicely–shot in low light as the sun was already down (this was the last thing on our schedule), but with my 5d Mark II’s high ISO capabilities and a 50mm f/1.8 lens, it worked well. I’d been shooting with my flash wirelessly but went for ambient light in this case (you can see the flash in my back pocket).

Came out like this:

The most fun was in the tunnel, though!

We got some other fun stuff as well, and it was good practice at combining ambient and flash light.

Dumo even breakdanced!

I got my Canon XTi almost exactly one year ago. In that year I’ve been all over the place and learned a huge amount about photography and lighting through some pretty concerted effort. Now, it’s a new year, and I want to do more paid photography work. To that end I’ve launched a new portfolio site. I’m really interested in any feedback on this, so please feel free to leave comments on this post (below) or email me directly. I hope you enjoy it!

I haven’t done much painting lately, but a trip to the Seattle Museum of Art and a look at a Jackson Pollock inspired me. Somewhere along the way I realized that I wanted to do a really gestural painting with a lot of thin white lines. The number 4970006670 came to mind in the middle of the night.

At this point, I’m done with the paint except for the numbers. Those, along with better photos, will come soon…

We laughed, we cried, we wore antlers. It was a really, really good time in Seattle and the surrounding area this year–and everyone was game for getting dressed up ridiculously for silly photos. With my new camera and lenses, there was just so much to do! It was GREAT. I really miss everyone.

Ok let me provide the list of odd circumstances that led to this:

1. Since the whole family was together for Christmas, we planned for me to take a bunch of family photos. Naturally we couldn’t possibly do that in a normal way. Instead, we wanted to recreate some famous photos and photo types.
2. We’ve had a set of pink gingham ornaments on our Christmas tree since time immemorial. My mom got the back in the 70’s, apparently. This year she threatened to leave them off the tree and there was nearly a mutiny. As a result, this sort of became the “pink gingham Christmas.”
3. Aaron and Adam and I all have clear memories of getting the “evil eye” from Mom on occasions when we were bad as kids. It was a piercing stare.
4. Mom mentioned to me that she had procured a pink gingham scarf for Christmas.

That’s when it all came together: I needed to shoot my mom, giving me “the look”, wearing the pink gingham scarf, like the Steve McCurry photo of the Afghan girl from the cover of National Geographic. This one:

I told my brothers about the idea and they affirmed the uncanny resemblance of “the look”, so I printed out a copy of this photo and brought it with me. I sort of hid it away because I knew if my mom saw it, she’d try to act it out, and I really doubted that would work. Then time flew, we did a bunch of stuff, it was a nonstop flurry of activity, etc. I forgot about that photo. The day I was to leave, I checked my flight a couple of hours before I was to leave for the airport and realized that the flight was a couple of hours earlier than I thought it was–which meant I had to pack and leave for the airport in about 30 minutes. Yikes. While packing, I found the photo. I could NOT let myself leave without getting the shot, but I had literally 5 minutes in which to do it. So here’s what we did:

1. I studied the photo for lighting; available light was certainly appropriate (good thing, because there was no time to set anything up anyway) but we needed a big window to get the right catchlights in the eyes.
2. Had my mom change into a simple black top and get the scarf.
3. Set a chair next to the big window in the living room. This required a quick move of the Christmas tree–I couldn’t move it too far so I squeezed in between it and the wall/window to get the right angle.
4. Sat Mom down, got the chair at the right angle, and dressed the scarf.
5. I needed a green background. Brothers to the rescue–they held a green blanket up behind her. I had them move sufficiently far back that I could throw it appropriately out of focus with the right aperture.
6. To get the framing right, I had Adam hold the example photo while I directed Mom in how to move her head and/or turn her body.
   
7. We got the framing just about right with this one, but the posed face wasn’t going to do the trick.
   
8. Finally it was time to get “the look”. I knew what I had to do. I had to swear at my mom.

   “Come on, Mom. Get it f***ing right.” CLICK!

9. I fired off a couple more frames as I apologized and told her it was only for the shoot. Luckily she believed me and started to laugh! (I’m putting the photo here to prove that.)
   
10. Then I reviewed my shots and saw that YES, I had what I needed! Showed it to the family, and it was confirmed. Unfortunately, in the excitement of dropping the camera to swear at my Mom (for which I’m really sorry, Mom…), I changed the framing. Mental note for next time to be cognizant of that.
11. Finally, got it home and processed the RAW image to bring out the details–just some curves, and a bit of localized exposure/contrast change to make her irises more similar to the ones in the original photo. And, voila!

There was a Richard Avedon exhibit at the SF MOMA last year (outstanding, of course) and I saw this there:

Leading up to Christmas, as we discussed the family photos we hoped to take, the idea of recreating some famous photographs came up. Everyone was in for this one and I knew it would be simple to do, so yay. The hardest part was getting everyone to have a nice-looking black shirt–who knew my dad not only didn’t own anything black (or even of a sufficiently dark color that it could appear as black when converted), but semi-refused to invest in any such thing? The Powers Of Mom convinced him. Then it was just a matter of copying the lighting and getting a straight-on shot from everyone with the proper nose shadows.

There are a couple there that aren’t straight on because the angled shots captured the people so much better. And, I could go in and photoshop the background a bit–we didn’t have paper so I hung a white sheet (slightly wrinkled…whoops) and tried to throw it out of focus a little–but I think the effect overall is as desired, and I’d rather spend my time editing some other photos (upcoming!).

I love the beginning of things–and new years are no exception. 2010 is looking exciting; looking back, 2008 was amazing and 2009 completely blew my mind, and I’m hoping that the trend continues.

One thing that I hope will contribute to that is my new purchase: a Canon 5D Mark II. In addition, I bought two lenses from borrowlenses.com: a Canon 16-35mm f/2.8 L II, and a Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro. I already had a Canon 50mm f/1.8, so I think it’s safe to say that I now have an arsenal of gear that should serve me for quite awhile.

I picked all of this up just before I left for Seattle to spend the holidays with my family. They are the BEST, and we’ve been looking forward to getting together for months–we all just have such a great time together. As soon as the trip was locked in we started talking about the family photos we wanted to take. There are tons, and I’ll be posting them in the coming days, but this is one of my favorites for sheer absurdity:

More to come!