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.

…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:

The Tibet Film Festival opened here in London on Thursday night. It was so much fun to go!

I’m totally proud of this:

And I shot this in the tube on the way home:

…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:

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.

…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:

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!

Alcatraz:

Himalayan fair:

Castro Country Club High-Heeled Race:

I didn’t have my external flash at Twin Peaks a couple of nights ago, but had some fun working with the available light. There was a bright moon, the city lights below, a fairly active parking lot, and my brother, sister-in-law, and Gabe. The images are dark, yes; it was night time. Shot with the lens wide open at f1.8:

Gabe rim-lit by the moon, with the city camera left filling in for his cigarrette:

Adam as a car passed; lights aren’t on him but they give a catchlight:

Gabe lit by car lights from the parking lot:

Jenna’s sillhouette with the city lights–I just love this one:

And the grand finale, Jenna with the city behind her, lit by Adam’s phone!

This guy was waiting for another musician to finish packing up so he could take his place. It was almost as if they’d figured out a schedule ahead of time–maybe they had.

The fabulous Nidhi is welcome to use my photos as reference for illustrations absolutely anytime…because everything she does is supremely awesome. Case in point: starting with these Napa photos:

…led to this!

First let me say that as this baby (Lensbaby, to be exact) is for some other brand of camera, it is currently very classily duct-taped to my Canon. Nevertheless:

It’s surprising what coffee places will let one get away with. Emily and I spent Saturday in a couple of different SF cafes playing with our cameras, just shooting back and forth…all natural light except for one reflector I had with me. We shot with her 50mm 1.4, my 100mm 2.8, and we both have the 16-35 2.8 L-series, so there was fun with that too. My whole album is here and hers is here, and these are some favorites…

…and a couple of her shots of me:

I’ve been to London and back post-Baja, but am finally getting around to posting some of my favorite shots from the trip. Juan and I drove his Westfalia from San Francisco to San Jose del Cabo, covering the whole of Baja on the way (as one does). It was my first time in Mexico and really couldn’t have been any more awesome. For example(s):

There are a lot more photos I really like in the trip album.

Shot on the walk from my apartment to my weekend coffee place and back:

All shot with my 100mm macro lens.

It’s so nice to be back in San Francisco (finally). I keep waking up and thinking my bedroom is a hotel, and an unfamiliar one at that–but I am indeed here enjoying this great weather. And so were a lot of other people this weekend. Also, dogs.

Went to a club tonight under London Bridge called Shunt Vaults. Great art, interesting music, and shot these:

Unfortunately when I got back to my hotel I realized I’d lost the memory card I shot 90% of the day’s photos with. This is driving me NUTS, but I think I’m going to go try to reshoot a couple of things tomorrow between art museums.

…look what she did!

It doesn’t get better than this.

‘

Well actually, it might. Stay tuned.

…yielded some outstanding photos, besides being an outstandingly good time. It was a little reunion of people from the Tibet trip, and the kickoff of some new ventures…

Lots of nice animal moments for photos:

Backlit by the sun, with a well-placed parking garage…

It was a lovely trip, and gave me a chance to shoot things I probably otherwise wouldn’t. I tend to do more “people” shots but this was (of course) a big opportunity for landscapes (and seascapes!), nature stuff, and baby photos. And skimboarding!

Enjoy.

I posted a few weeks ago with links and instructions for figuring out where the sun will go down. While in Hawaii I wanted to take some moonrise shots, so did some research on how to do the same sort of thing for the moon.

One major difference here is that while the sun moves (in relation to the horizon, and in relation to time) very little from one day to another, the moon comes up about an hour later each day. That seemed wierd to me at first, but when you think about it, a lunar month is 28 days, and there are 24 hours in the day, so I guess it makes sense. Unless I completely don’t get it at all and that’s a coincidence, which is possible.

In any case:

1. first find the moonrise data for your location here
2. on the results page, choose “rise/set time/azimuth” for Columns and click Show
3. note the moonrise (or set) time and azimuth for your date
4. use the information from the Where will the sun go down? post to visualize this on a map and then calculate it in person.

If you plan to do this repeatedly, it might be handy to have a table of moonrise/set times for an entire year, which you can get here.

The map part is harder–that map is for a solar calculator and therefore doesn’t play automatically populate moon azimuths (azimi?). But, it can be approximated by fudging the numbers, and the rest of the instructions (related to using a compass) work the same way.

One of the coolest things I did in Hawaii (this time) was stumble upon the Hawaii Amateur Skimboarding League’s Victoria Skimboards Dangerous Shorebreak competition at Sandy Beach. If you’re unfamiliar with skimboarding, or specifically with dangerous break skimboarding, this video shows some of last year’s competition.

I was shooting into the sun (which was high in the sky), so the waves were lit from behind; there was plenty of light, so a fast shutter speed was no problem; and the competitors were close to the shore, so it was easy to get lots of detail. After having some success with my Sigma 70-300 last week with the kitesurfers, I grabbed it again to get in close. Same technique–burst shooting and AI Servo mode. I’m SO happy with the lot of these!

A couple of favorites:

And the whole album:

Four things united only by their presence in this post. Well, that, and the fact that I’ve photographed them in the last couple of days.

My…uh…neice-in-law?

The infamous Shrimp Truck (Giovanni’s, of course):

The beach at Kaena point - at this point my polarizing filter was covered in mist, but I actually quite like the effect:

And, my brother’s pistol. California people, please don’t be offended by the gun…I’m not making a political statement, just practicing my product photography.

It was windy as can be today, but I HAD to get to the beach. Adam and I went down there to check it out and the water was FULL of kitesurfers. So awesome!

I used my 70-300mm craptastic Sigma lens for this. This is the first lens I ever bought, when I was in London and thought I might not be back for awhile and wanted to get some different shots, and when the only criteria were mm and price. This lens is disappointing because the contrast suuuuuucks. BUT, 300mm isn’t bad so it’s still nice to have–and the autofocus is fairly quick. I set this up on AI Servo with burst shooting. That meant boring framing and planning to crop–which was fine because I knew I’d want to zoom in more anyway. Getting around the lousy contrast required some tweaking, but since these are RAW files, I think they’re still acceptable–if I was serious about this kind of photography I’d invest in something else, but for zero extra dollars, it’s not bad.

Regardless of all the lens business, kitesurfing is dramatic and fantastic, and this was a great opportunity to watch and practice my action shots.

In fact, it was pretty anticlimactic.

A couple of hours later we saw these horses doing what all the humans had been doing all day–hightailing it to high ground and watching the water below.

And just to prove a point, tonight we climbed out onto the rocks by Kailua beach to check out the tidepools. The full moon, combined with the 5dmkII’s stellar (lunar?) low-light capabilities, made for amazing landscapes…

This weekend, in addition to the baseball photos, I had the pleasure of doing a shoot with my friends Monsters are not Myths. I recently shot them live, which got me thinking about doing a staged shoot. I am really excited about how these turned out! Take a look at the entire main album or the alternates to see a lot more, but these are some highlights.

We shot all around their rehearsal space in South San Francisco. The shots above are in a hallway outside their room; there was another great band rehearsing next to us when we took these shots. This was lit with just one large softbox over my right shoulder. Then we went to another end of the building and found this interesting garage door. This time I wanted to contrast Annie’s hotness with the dudes, just for fun. This was shot with one large softbox on the left, and a small flash pointed at the wall on my right for fill.

Then we ventured outside, where there’s a large covered cement patio of sorts. We set up a bare light (in a cone, of course) on the left and a softbox on the right for some fill. Balancing the shadows on the wall with the drama on the subjects was a fun little puzzle; I wanted to get some serious contrast. But before we got going, we got everyone covered in safflower oil, and I took some sports eye black (which I’d actually bought for the baseball shoot) and got their shirts, bodies, and hair a little dirty-looking. Then I had them go run around in the rain for a couple of minutes to get kind of wet–the water beads up and looks like sweat. I was back against some bushes shooting this, and needed to get down really low, so I would up laying sideways on my back on a box, holding a ring flash in my left hand and my camera in my right–which wound up making me pretty sore the next day, actually. But all worth it–they look suitably epic.

Finally, I wanted to try a closeup that would show all of their faces. We put Annie on a box in the front (to get her the right height) and switched the locations of the lights so the bare key light was on the right side–and I think we temporarily turned off the soft box for this one. I put on my 100mm lens for this (a lot of the rest had been shot with my 16-35 to give that epic wide-angle view) and set it to f22, which worked with the light and also gave me the necessary depth of field. I couldn’t back up any more because of the bushes at the side of the patio but I was literally laying into them to get the distance I needed.

Finally we turned the box on its side, and stood all of them in front of it to get a blown-out background shot, with the key light pointing at them from slightly to my right.

With all of that lighting set up, we had to get sexy individual shots, too. We’d already done Annie’s inside–love her in the dress looking foxy. Tyler was just so oily–and so known for taking his shirt off during performances. I put Evan in front of the softbox, which highlighted the contrast and grubbiness we’d created on the t-shirt. For Nick, we simply HAD to back-light his hair and beard–which also gave an opportunity to get a nice shot of his breath (it was getting cold out there!).

My good friend Sam kicked ass at the lighting–what a tremendous pleasure having someone so awesome be there for this. We’ve had some great photo outings before and I’m sure there are more to come.

Thanks to MANM–you guys rock! Hope these help you get where you’re going that much sooner…

Last weekend, I took some test shots for an upcoming “Women of the CWBL” calendar I’m planning to shoot. I’ve played in the California Women’s Baseball League for six seasons and we’re always looking for fundraising options…and a calendar almost begs to be done. Some will be more traditionally sexy, some tougher, some more/less risque, and of course, as soon as we got rolling, things just started to unfold…

Big thanks to Jen and April, both fantastic models! And much more to come with this.

When shooting outside at or around twilight, it’s pretty important to know where the sun’s going to go down (or where it’s going to come up). It’s easy enough to look up sunrise/sunset times, but the sunset/rise moves across the horizon throughout the year.

This took some digging to find, but it’s actually very easy to figure this out. You’ll need:

1. This link to the NOAA Solar Calculator
2. A compass, which you can get pretty much anywhere.

Then do this:

1. Find your location (the location where you’ll be at sunse) on the map in that link
2. Enter the date you’re interested in
3. Note the sunset time. Under “AZ/EI” you’re getting a degree measurement, which is what we need eventually; but it’s actually showing the current azimuth instead of the azimuth at sunset.
4. Enter the sunset time in the time fields next to the date fields. The AZ/EI field will update. That’s the number you’ll need.

The number you’ve just found should be a degree measurement, between 0 and 360. This is the solar azimuth angle at sunset. Generically, an azimuth is an angular measurement in a spherical coordinate system. The solar azimuth is calculated (by the application at that link, anyway) as the number of degrees clockwise from true north that corresponds to the position on the horizon that the sun is directly above. If that seems confusing, it’s because it is. On the bright side: it’s really easy to work with when you get to where you want to shoot:

When you get to your location, take out your trusty compass and:

1. Align the compass with magnetic north
2. Find the degree measurement on the compass that matches the number you got earler

That direction is pointing toward where the sun will go down.

There’s definitely a margin of error here. First, this doesn’t account for topography getting in the way (if you’re next to a mountain, the sun will go behind it long before it’s “down”, so the angle will be off). Second, the compass is reading magnetic north instead of due north, and the reported azimuth is measured from due north. But: it’s free, it’s pretty easy, and for my purposes, it’s good enough.

I was planning on a Tibetan lesson last night, but when it got cancelled, I was left with “nothing” to do. “Nothing”, for me, apparently translates into:

1. Going for a run, getting rained on
2. Coming home, taking a shower
3. Emailing a bunch of people about upcoming shoots
4. Going to a cafe, eating a red velvet cupcake, and studying Tibetan for an hour or so
5. Walking home, stopping by the store on the way
6. Doing two blog posts about my yak leather bag(s) and an upcoming trip to Tibet
7. Receiving email back from people for the upcoming shoots–hurray, got the models I wanted!
8. Going to see my friend Will and his band Pure Ecstasy at a bar down the way, with camera in tow
9. Downloading shots, making selects, and exporting JPGs
10. Finally crashing into bed

And let’s note, that all took place between about 6pm and 1am. Solid evening! Here are a couple favorites from Pure Ecstasy at the Broadway Grill.

Stage lighting is so tricky. It looks awesome in person but is killer-hard to get right on camera. I think the trick is that you just have to completely GO WITH IT. So far as I know, there’s no good tool to “fight” it–and by that I mean normalize it somehow–other than going black and white. This is the kind of thing I can only seem to learn when I’m just messing around–like last night. By the way, I didn’t do any color correction on any of these photos–just tweaked the curves a little and added some noise reduction, along with a bunch of cropping.

Note also that I scared the crap out of the band when I snuck up behind them (whoops). Sometimes I think being a musician is a big advantage in shooting musicians–it does help me anticipate when things are going to happen–but then sometimes I think being a woman overshadows that completely.

I finished a pair of these, and attendant acoutrements, just before Christmas–one for me, and one for John. So far I can’t take it out of the house without getting comments, and I hear he’s had the same experience–so it worked…

While walking through Kanze in Kham (Tibet) with John and our friend Sandy, I spied what looked like some sweet leather work in a shop window. We went inside and it was quickly clear that it was some REALLY sweet leather work, and there was plenty more of it; we were in a leatherworking shop, and the owner/craftsman was working there right then. The thing that had caught my eye was the bottom of a saddle bag made from yak leather. These bags were about 20″ wide and easily 36″ long, and sold in pairs (as saddle bags should be…). John and I both thought they were impressive, but what could we actually do with saddle bags? I wondered about making shoulder bags out of them and he liked that idea…and before long we were the proud owners of a pair, along with some extra leather. Back at camp they were widely admired and we sent a lot more business in that direction–and then spent the rest of the trip designing the bags I’d make when I got home. We even bought some yak hair rope from some people in the village where we were staying to re-work the existing cords on the sides.

Back in the states, I started putting together a prototype. Since I was going to be working in leather (heavy yak leather no less), I knew I’d only get once chance–there’s no real re-working with leather, since once holes are punched, you’re pretty much stuck with them. I made the prototype with canvas, plastic, and red sock monkey fabric to represent the red leather we’d picked up for ornamentation. We did the email-photos-and-modify-design thing for awhile until we were both happy with what we were planning (we eventually eliminated the design on the strap).

I got some light pigskin for lining and assembled all of the materials I’d need for sewing, both by machine and by hand. Then it was time for pattern making, cutting, cutting into the exising bags (!), and assembly. If you’ve never done any leather sewing, let me attest: it’s no small task, but I can share the secret: GLUE. You can’t pin leather, and I did use metal clips in some cases, but glue is the answer to slippage, and with a very standard machine like mine, that can be a big problem. Machine-wise the other big key is having the right needles and thread. But still, I did a TON of this by hand–the red designs were sewn on by machine, but pretty much all of the rest of the topstitching (flap, strap, dharma wheels at the sides, etc.) was done by hand. By the end I couldn’t really feel my fingertips anymore.

But WAS IT WORTH IT. There are about a million pockets, pockets inside pockets, and a whole organizer on the inside back. I wound up being unable to use the yak hair rope we got from the villagers, and instead I spun some similar yarn and braided rope from alpaca roving I had on hand (because I am the type of person who has alpaca roving on hand). And if you know me, you know I couldn’t leave it at that; I also made his-and-hers wallets to go along with the bags. The bags are huge; great for a long weekend or whatever in the West, or who knows what in Tibet, so a little satellite thing is completely necessary.

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!

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!

…so if you need a shot of a pink-haired girl screaming while backlit, or an unbelievably close-up shot of my eye, you know where to go! These were shot by my good friend Joseph Linaschke a few weeks ago at his home studio in Pasadena. I now sort of want to pretend I’m a model.

Who knows where I will end up!

Last night a group of us assembled at my place for a fashion shoot in the lobby of my apartment building. We worked late getting the mood just right…and I could not be happier with where we wound up. As I keep saying with everything, I want to spend a little Photoshop time with them, but I suppose not having access to it is forcing me to be fastidious about lighting, etc. At any rate, there will be more of these in the future. For now, I can’t resist a sneak peek:

A few shots from the other evening. I’m getting my money’s-worth on these lights. Especially since they’re borrowed.

These are straight from the camera, no processing whatsoever. One is really noisy–looks like one of the two lights we were using hadn’t recycled yet and didn’t fire, so the balance is off but I actually like it conceptually. I intend to have some fun with that in post-processing–make it really grainy, moody, knock a different background in there, etc. But for now–raw material. Big thanks to Toe for being such an amenable model.

…and boy are my arms tired.  Ha.  But seriously, folks: last-minute business trip to London over Thanksgiving weekend + close friends living in Stockholm = weekend in Copenhagen.  This brings my “countries I visited for the first time in 2009″ tally to 6, if you count Tibet as a country separate from China, which I do: Japan, the UK, Finland, China, Tibet, and Denmark.  Not bad.

I spent an afternoon at the Danish king’s summer palace, which included a room with mirrors on all walls/floor/ceilings, and a variety of museum items like tiny stuff carved from what appeared to be ivory. I also ate a giant hotdog and played around on a weird sculpture in the middle of one of the squares.

We stayed in a great apartment and I enjoyed the Danish graffiti (particularly the use of the word “spoon”)…

…took the obligatory boat tour…

…and visited monuments like a church with a staircase winding around the outside of its spire (sadly closed for the season) and the “Black Diamond”.

We went to the lighting of the Copenhagen Christmas tree–which (at least for this night) was powered by people riding stationary bikes around it. Copenhagen is about to host a giant climate summit and there was no shortage of “green” messaging all over. I really like this shot–shot with my 430EX flash with a Gary Fong diffuser, set to underexpose by two stops, and the shutter dragged to get the background light. There’s a nice blur on the right of some people walking by.

Back in London, on my last day I made a mad dash around the tube system looking for photo opportunities at about 5:30 in the morning, before there were many people up and about. I am still waiting on my copy of Photoshopp but can’t wait to play with these some more once I have it.

More photos in the trip gallery.

Joseph Linaschke, my good friend and old neighbor, is a killer photographer. Ever since I’ve been remotely into photography, I’ve been dying to spend some time working with him, but he up and moved to LA. Last weekend I spent some time with him working in his home studio, which was a giant lesson in lighting. Once we got the seamless white backdrop lit, which took most of the afternoon (who knew that was so complicated?), we completely abandoned it and decided to have some fun with Joseph shooting me standing in front of a giant softbox. The pink hair really has a way of bringing out the extreme.

This was so much fun, I can hardly stand it. We did a ridiculous costume change too and I’ll probably post some of those at some point. In the meantime, Joseph’s submitted the batch of these to iStockphoto. Fingers crossed!

I’ve been dying to do some ridiculous shots with Gabe, because I know he can pull it off. Tonight he came by and after fixing my car and eating dinner, all we both wanted to do was sit. But we did a few shots anyway. The ridiculousness will happen this weekend.

I spent the weekend with my friend Joseph Linaschke, setting up his home studio in Pasadena. We spent all Saturday afternoon experimenting with ways to light a 9′ white seamless…and then all Saturday night doing a ridiculous shoot of me (photos forthcoming). After doing some holiday portraits of neighbors on Sunday, I finally got my camera out to experiment a little with Joseph as my subject. The moral of the story is: I’m ready to set up a mini version of this with the kit I have at home, so there will be more like this forthcoming.

…so named because that’s what we used to make the (fake) grill. Vivi was AWESOME, and big thanks to Gabe and Kandra for driving. There are many more shots, but this is what’s ready now…

…I’ll be getting this incorporated into the site (and using it as a watermark) eventually, but I can’t wait for that. It’s too awesome! Such a great big thanks to Nidhi for this illustration of me!

Thanks to Sam, I have a nice little kit of lights in my apartment at the moment! I’m improvising a backdrop with one of my dropcloths and I’ve been taking some portraits, experimenting with different setups. I’ve done a set of Katie and a set of Jackson and here are a couple of my favorites:

Let’s also add that I’m completely Photoshop-less right now, so these are pretty much entirely unedited–and the conversion to black & white was the heavy-handed Picasa way instead of the nuanced Adobe Camera RAW HSL way. I’m going to redo some of these when that gets resolved.

My friend Will Russ (we met over 10 years ago working at Opcode!) put on an OUTSTANDING concert at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz last weekend, and I shot it. He had a killer band and Tammi Brown joining him for a lot of the vocals. I was really, REALLY impressed and I can’t wait to see them again!

I’ve been on blog-hiatus for a couple of weeks, sort of recovering from a flurry of activity (most of it photo-related) that’s taken up most of the last few months. But I’m back!

One of the most fun outings was a roller derby bout featuring the Undead Bettys. This was my first roller derby and, not surprisingly, I loooooved it. And, it made me realize one of the things I love most about photography: it gives me license to get right up in the mix of whatever I can talk my way into. Improvisation really pays off!

I didn’t really know in advance what I’d be up against, so my gear imposed some major limitations. I’m still shooting with a Canon XTi, and I rented a zoom and a wide-angle lens both of which had a max 4.0 aperture. We were at a skating rink with florescent lights and a shiny white floor, so there was more light than I’d expected but still not really enough for really fast shutter speeds. The XTi is pretty crappy at high ISO speeds, but in the immortal words of some sports photographer I read about somewhere, a grainy sports photo is better than a blurry sports photo. Ok, fine, I shot at 1600 ISO most of the time–but even wide open at a 4.0 aperture, most of the time my shutter had to be slow enough that I couldn’t really get crisp action photos on the curves. So, anyway–I just went with it and used it as an opportunity to practice my panning skills.

This was a day I’ll never forget. Just an utterly amazing experience plus a TON of fun. What a fantastic bunch of people and an unbelievable show. Photos will be ready in about a week.

In the meantime, thanks to Emily, here we are (left to right): Gaylord Perry, me, Rollie Fingers, and Bill Lee. I’m laughing because Gaylord Perry just took his hat off and put it on my head. Earlier he offered to help me dye it “a normal color”. Turns out pink isn’t for everyone! No complaints here, though.

I’ve gone through everything, finally, and have an album of photos from Tibet that I’m really happy with. I’ll probably monkey with one or two a little more, but basically I think I can put these photos to bed and focus on some newer ones! Here are a few that weren’t in the original “quick & dirty” album I put up right after I got back:

I’ve just read two outstanding photography books. I’ve been going through the entire photography section at the library (and neighboring libraries) and looking through the sections in virtually every bookstore in my path, and I’ve only bought a very few books–just the ones that I think I’ll want to refer back to. Both of these have jumped to the top of my list.

Striking Poses: Creating a Visual Dialogue is a book of environmental portraits shot all over the world, with each one accompanied by a short conversation with Max Fallon, the photographer. His focus on people and relationships as a way to tell the story of a location, to enhance what one normally sees in location photos, gave me a lot of food for thought. I enjoy shooting closeup portraits with a wide open aperture–but now I want to try doing more wide-angle portraits. I got a taste of that shooting Mina’s going-away party and I need to spend more time with that. (I also need to buy some new gear to really be able to explore it…which is its own whole quagmire.)

The absolute best photography book I’ve read since, well, ever is Masters’ Guide to Wedding Photography: Capturing Unforgettable Moments and Lasting Impressions by Marcus Bell. He’s a very successful Australian photographer. Don’t let the title fool you; although wedding photography is the explicit subject, the lessons here would apply to any type of photography with people. The images in this book were unique and timeless, but what really made the book outstanding was the balance of different styles of information–technical and artistic, personal and logistic, etc. It goes from gear info to developing relationships, then shows some ways to demonstrate and highlight relationships photographically, talks about workflow and processes, and gets into step-by-step descriptions for selecting and creating master images. After reading it, I went back through all of my Tibet photos and did selects and edits, and now I feel like I have a real album. Then there were some great ideas about client management, marketing, and sales. It just hit all of the bases and did so in a way that was thoroughly relatable and highly educational. Outstanding!

Mina’s moving to Chicago, and I couldn’t be more irritated about it. Fortunately we have some photos from her going-away drinkfest last night to remember her by.

A few photos from the wedding I shot about two weeks ago…

On Saturday, after shooting Ann & Matt’s wedding reception, I did a shoot with Nidhi, of Nidhi & Nick’s wedding fame. We did a couple of location shoots that are providing fodder for some Photoshop work–Nidhi is a super-talented illustrator and I want to show her at illustration-size. At the end we drove to three different grocery stores looking for proper cupcakes so we could realize my vision for a shoot of Nidhi eating a cupcake. I’m not sure why…maybe just because she’s fun, and cupcakes are fun.

When I get these all put together into “3 Views of Nidhi”, they’ll be here.

I’m finally getting handy with masks, adjustment layers, and hand-painting in Photoshop. Of course I’ve already been doing color/contrast correction and cropping with my photos, but it’s about time I learn how to do more interesting things via computer. Here’s one:

Nick & Nidhi are getting married tomorrow, so today, they had a mehndi–everyone came by and we all got our hands/feet/arms painted in henna. Nidhi’s were the most spectacular, of course. This was my first time with this–so interesting and beautiful, and great company to boot…

This is what the mehndi looks like after it’s just been painted on. After it dries, it’s dabbed with a mix of lemon juice and sugar to bring out the color; later, the henna flakes off, leaving the stain on the skin, which lasts for 2-3 weeks.

Nancy and I wandered into Sephora a week or so ago. Wherever we go, people ask if we’re hair stylists (between my pink and her curls, we have noticeable hair…). At any rate, I had my camera with me and got some beautiful shots of her. And I took some self-portraits when I got home as a thanks to the makeup artist who took care of us, Farah.

It also just hit me: together we create a really charged pink-and-orange palette.

If you know me, you heard me talk about it incessantly before and after. It was all I hoped it would be and more. It was outstanding and genuinely life-changing. The people in our group were wonderful; the Tibetans were just fantastic. Very curious about all of us, and they loooooved my pink hair. I had several sincere inquiries as to whether the color was natural.

We spent a night in a nunnery; we herded yaks; we set out prayer flags; we were questioned by the police. I saw a monk with a Playboy fanny pack. Frankly it would be impossible to sum up in one blog post. I’m thinking about doing a couple-weeks-late day-by-day blog, but we’ll see on that. In the meantime, please check out this initial gallery.

Just before I left for Tibet, I had the pleasure of shooting a weekend tournament of vintage baseball. One of the teams, the Stogies–just a fantastic group of guys who I look forward to working with again in the future–invited me down, and with access to just about everything, I got some great action shots on both Saturday and Sunday.

I’m back from Tibet, which was OUTSTANDING.

I’ve been doing some solid photography.

I spent Sunday at the Iowa State Fair.

I’m coming home tomorrow, and I’ll have tons of photos to edit and post. Plus I can’t wait to get started on some projects!

Wellp, Tibet is almost upon us, and I think I’m ready. I rented a 50mm 1.4 for the weekend for some final practice shots (and decided that I’ll take the 50mm 1.2 with me, instead). Katie and I did some traipsing around, first to an auto show and later into the fog, and I took a few shots after my baseball game today, too.

Gabe and I happened upon this amazing sunset on Thanksgiving 2007, and he took this shot of me. As I prepare for my trip to Tibet (and I go in a week!), this photo really captures how I feel.

The whole album is here, but here are a few excerpts:

An abstract, shiny metal sculpture made a great subject for the fisheye:

Fairs are already ridiculous–great for a fisheye to distort even more, and great for night photography:

An exposure of about 30 minutes of the night sky and a dramatic bridge…a couple of cars drove by, creating streaks at the bottom and revealing me & Sam on the right:

View of SF from a Potrero Hill crosswalk:

As my trip to Tibet is fast-approaching (I’ll be gone three weeks from yesterday!), I’m spending a lot of weekend time trying out camera gear to see what I want to bring with me. This weekend it was a Canon EFS 17-55/2.8. That’s what I used to take those shots of Gabe, and on Sunday I took it over to Berkeley for some fun. I also rented a polarizing filter to see how those work.

Morning radio show = sunrise photo shoot:

Next door to the Chinese consulate, you’ll find St. Mary’s of the Assumption, a giant church which has apparently landed on our planet from the future. I’ve walked by it, seen it through my telephoto lens from Bernal heights, and after a couple of trips to the consulate to get my visa, decided it was time to go in. It was a veritable melange of geometry and stained glass.

I have a half-globe glass ring that always reminds me of a crystal ball. I took this photo in Starbucks the other day of the ring sitting on my wallet sitting on a table.

…include, but are not limited to, the following:

1. Sam & Casca being charming
2. A philosophical question: how did they get the graffiti so high up?
3. Terrifying baby photos

To see what my photos would look like if I knew what I was doing, take a look at Sam’s, here.

Kayaking turns out to be awesome. Mostly because you can get so close to really big ships that you’re actually under them. Also, you can kayak to a bar, have a drink, and kayak back. Great success. On the downside, was really trying not to drop my camera in the water, therefore fewer photos taken than maybe would have been otherwise. BUT, photos taken in my memory: priceless.

And after kayaking, Bernal Heights at sunset.

Given that I love Jan Saudek, and am now obsessed with Josef Koudelka, it’s not surprising that I’m enjoying Josef Sudek a lot as well. When I saw this:

…I thought, hey, that reminds me of a photo I took several years ago from way up in the tower of St. Vitus’s cathedral at the Prague castle.

And then I thought, hey, it reminds me of that because it’s the same thing.

I am obsessed with this photograph, and now with Josef Koudelka himself.

Happy Birthday, Julia! You know how to celebrate in style.

It was beautiful! And we had a great time running around the Embarcadero getting portraits after the wedding. Could we find a better-looking or happier couple? I don’t think so.

For me, it was SO much fun to 1) work with some different lenses, particularly a 50mm 1.2, and 2) shoot such fantastic subjects. This makes me want to do a lot more of this! And, get into fashion photography.

Emily took the more “official” shots and I was going for the more artsy side. This is the album of my favorites from the bajillions taken with my camera. Here are just a few of my favorite-favorites.

The wedding’s tomorrow, but we took test shots at the rehearsal tonight. The whole family was so sweet!

When two things that have no reason to be the same just are, it’s neat.

While walking around in Burlingame over the weekend, I stumbled upon a game of “historical baseball”. They play with the rules and equipment of the 1860’s. That means gloves are literally just that…gloves. No fancy mitts. No shin guards. Bats are 40-ounce and higher. And the umpire wears a top hat!

There were even people in the stands in historical attire. I sat down near them, unsure of what I was watching, and said, “Good afternoon. I can’t help but notice that I have hot pink hair, and he (pointing at umpire) is wearing a top hat. Something seems amiss. What’s going on?” That broke the ice and we chatted for some time while I got my camera ready.

Following the game, I became the impromptu team photographer. So much fun! They play again in a couple of weekends and I plan to make it out to catch that.

I’ve found the cure for everything that ails one, and it is: a trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

My last Sunday in London, I went down to Brighton and enjoyed the seashore. And I saw a guy playing a sousaphone…on stilts! I mean…playing it on stilts is probably not that much harder than playing it on not-stilts. But how does one get up onto the stilts while wrapped in a sousaphone? That’s what I’d like to know.

Here’s a list of things I did today:

1. Slept in
2. Had a nice breakfast
3. Went to Camden Town, which is basically the Haight Ashbury of London, except far easier to get lost in for hours (which I did)
4. Had Moroccan food for lunch
5. Went to Cyberdog, which is apparently from the future
6. Went back to the church/park from Wednesday night, St. Dunstan’s and took a ton of photos
7. Went to the National Gallery and saw the Picasso retrospective, along with plenty of other paintings from the last 5 centuries
8. Went to a concert at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, across the street–Brandenburg Concertos 5 & 6, along with some Teleman, Vivaldi, Piazolla, Mozart

All in all, a good day.

…I found an old burned out church that had been turned into a park. I couldn’t get in, but I took a lot of photos.

I also went to London Bridge.

Yesterday’s shots were fun, but when I got home and saw them it just made me think about what I wished I’d done differently. So….I went back. Also I bought a cheap zoom lens, which helped a lot. You can see them all here.

When it all gets to be a little too much, it pays to have a brother and sister-in-law living in Hawaii. I went for a long weekend…follow the link to see all the photos!

I took these today–and there are a lot more in this gallery, if you’ll follow the link.

Emily put up her photos too–far fancier than mine!

http://picasaweb.google.com/emilysw2003/PhotoDayWithAngela#

A favorite:

Emily and I spent the day in San Francisco taking photos. You can see all of the photos in the gallery here. We:

…went to brunch…

…then to the Hyatt downtown, which I love taking people to…

…then over to this fountain that’s like some kind of rain column, a couple of buildings over…

…then back to the Ferry Building…

…then took a ferry…

…over to Sausalito and back…

…and finally had a lovely dinner!

…this is part of what I see.

Protect yourselves, for you may die of cuteness upon viewing these dogs at the Yoyogi dog park in Harajuku.

Many, many more adorable dogs in ridiculous outfits after the jump…

…meet, in this shining example of marketing:

YES, WE DO!

But wait, there’s SO MUCH MORE!

Look what turned up while I was uploading my photos from Tokyo!