Angela J. Hill

…is ridiculous.  Ridiculously good-looking.

Flowers and birds aren’t exactly my favorite subjects, but it was a hot day and I felt like spending the afternoon in a park. So I thought I’d practice getting kind of arty with this stuff.

Shall we discuss how hard it is to line up a really small depth of field with a plant that’s quivering in the wind and a flying bug? Shall we discuss how many crappy shots went into getting this single good one? Why bother; you understand. I guess the point of this is: patience.

On the other hand, this bee was a willing subject.

The World Cup match was disappointing to say the least, but the first half was pretty exciting, despite the lousy call…

Here I am in London, so let’s get started. I shot this at the merry-go-round in Kensington Gardens today. Great opportunity to practice panning, and I got very lucky with this one:

Portobello Road market this morning–I love scenes like this where the color really comes together:

And yesterday, at Paddington station:

Like 200, this one is done by virtue of the fact that I’m gone and can’t work on it anymore. Had some issues with the gloss/matte mediums that haven’t been problematic before, which I’m sure is due to using lighter paint colors. So I think I will go back and highlight that when I return, but it’s done for now:

The numbers are there, at the bottom…

This one is similar to 641 and 407, but unfortunately the numbers themselves are impossible to see straight on…

…but they’re there:

When I get back from the summer abroad, I may go back and make some adjustments to bring that out–maybe paint the number in a slightly “off” color or something, then go over it again in the matte finish. Love the texture in this one, though. Very happy with that!

I just found this pink frame hiding under a pile of stuff in my studio, and thought this print of Nidhi’s illustration might work in there–and it does. Love it. Too bad I will now leave for London and not see it for three months. But still!

To the left is a vintage-style baseball, sitting in a wooden hand, with a tiny hat on it. Kudos to Gabe for hat placement.

Last Saturday, out running around with Gabe and Sam in Sam’s neighborhood, we spotted a vintage cosmetics case at an estate sale. The initials: M.E.H. The price: fifteen bucks. What I’ll keep in there: anything I feel “meh” about.

Those are vintage airline tickets tied to the top handle.

The two above (and most below) were shot at Recoleta (a cemetary). With the first, I loved how the plants, the living things, were locked in. And the second was shot holding my 100mm lens backwards in front of my camera. Never tried that before but it creates some ethereal artifacts I liked.

My Saturday plans were cancelled…what to do with a whole weekend day free? Photo session with Sam, of course. We spent all day setting up lights, recruiting models, and playing with lighting different backgrounds. We also had some great ice cream, though that’s unrelated.

These are all my shots of course, except for the one of me.

Last night I did the texture; today I did the color. I think it’s clear by now that these are done with latex house paint. Today I had the yellow paint mixed and they could only do a semi-gloss because of the pigments–so when I add the numbers in a matte finish, I’ll also gloss-ify the rest of the color field. Hoping to do one more of these before I leave for London on Thursday, but who knows…

I really enjoy these paintings. The paint is mixed directly on the canvas, and the more of this I do the more of a feel I get for the necessary timing. It’s like diving into a pool; once I start, there’s a very solid timing window, and I have to get things into the correct position before I hit water/the paint dries, or I might break my neck. Painting like this feels a little like free fall and I love it.

…was FANTASTIC.

Kris Holland was the wedding photographer, and this blog post of his has tons of great photos. Of the few that I took, I like this the best:

Paintings are ruined.  People behave selfishly.  Luggage is lost.

These are the times when it’s most valuable to get the kind of message I got yesterday.  I’m heading to London for 3 months (in a week!) and intend to do a lot of side trips while I’m there.  My coworker wrote:

If anyone can find themselves on a midnight train in Morocco speeding toward an obscure music festival in the desert, it’d be you.  If anyone could find themselves dipping toes in the Black Sea from a fisherman’s boat, it’d be you.  If ANYONE could find themselves in the capital of a country in the middle of a velvet revolution, it’d be you.  Go forth and ADVENTURE!

Thanks, Whitney, for the reminder.  I’m putting those three things on my list for the coming months!

AND, just now, as I was about to post this, my phone rang–the airline found my luggage.

I took this photo in Tibet last summer, and now it’s going to be in the photo exhibit that goes along with the Tibet Film Festival in the UK. Films are showing in London throughout July, then traveling the UK for the remainder of the year. Best of all, I’ll be in London for the summer, so I’ll get to see it. Very exciting!

I want to finish this before I leave the country next. We’ll see if that happens, but I do like the way it’s coming along. This series has been interesting and has really made me think more about the textures that go with my numbers. This one is muuuuuch bumpier–almost pebbly–than the last one, 0350200450.