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!)

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.

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!

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:

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.

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:

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.

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…

I arrived in Hawaii just in time for the tsunami that’s supposed to hit in about 5 hours. We just heard the warning sirens and it’s pretty much the only thing on the news, but my brother’s place (where I’m staying) is on high ground so we’re safe. This does rearrange the priorities for the weekend…

My trip to Tibet last year was the inaugural year of the “Dream of the Turquoise Bee” Tibet trips led by Dianne Aigaki–incredible artist, world traveler, and more than anything else just one of my favorite people on the planet. You couldn’t do better than this for an authentic trip to a part of Tibet that few westerners ever get to see.

Following is the announcement that Dianne sent out. If you’re interested, check out the itinerary or Dianne’s blog, which has fantastic stories about getting ready for last year’s adventure. Enjoy!

An unparalleled experience for botanical illustrators, photographers, landscape painters, botanists, ethnobotanists, outdoor enthusiasts and those whose life dream has always been to travel to Tibet.

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.

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.

…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.

The fun continues. I’ve learned the alphabet, which is no small task, as it turns out. There are 30 consonants and 4 additional vowels, but although the written word is read left to right, it turns out that many of the letters can be stacked on top of each other to create new sounds. We’re on to basic grammar and vocabulary now, so I thought I’d sum up some of what I’ve learned about getting the hang of the alphabet (for English speakers).

1. The language is read left-to-right, and letters are aligned at the top (ours are aligned at the bottom).
2. The alphabet consists of 30 consonants; vowels are separate. English letters have names that are only sort of related to the sounds they make, but Tibetan letters (we’re talking consonants for now) are named with the letter’s sound combined with an “ahh” vowel. For example, the English alphabet includes “jay, kay, el, em, en…”. The Tibetan equivalent would be “ja, ka, la, ma, na…”. Much easier.
3. When you’re learning the consonants, you’re getting them with “ah” built in. This really is a lot easier and makes a lot more sense, when you think about it. There are four vowel marks that can be added above or below the consonant to change the “ah” to an “eh, ee, oh, ou”
4. In general, when consonants get stacked, you pronounce either the one on the bottom or a different sound altogether.
5. There are a lot of sounds in English that are almost identical, but we hear them completely differently. For example: “pa” and “ba”, “ka” and “ga”, “cha” and “ja”, and “ta” and “da”. Recognizing that has made it easier for me to wrap my mind around the Tibetan letters that seemed indistinguishable at first.
6. Learning a pitch-based language seemed impossible to me when I started. As a musician, I couldn’t completely get my head around it. Do you speak in a key? Does everyone speak in the same key? Can you change keys in the middle of a sentence? Turns out it’s a lot easier than all that. From what I can tell, it’s not exactly a different pitch, but more a different overtone series that creates a feeling of higher/lower. For example:
   • a pitch considered high sounds like a taut, well-tuned drum–basically it *has* a pitch
   • a pitch considered low sounds much breathier, airier, less tuned–there’s a lower pitch implied but it’s more of the absence of a higher pitch
   • there are also letters that imply a pitch change from low to high–which is actually pretty easy to handle as it just sounds (to English-speaking ears) like a question
7. There are names for stacked letters, and they’re kind of fun–the English equivalent would be “g with an r-head” or something like that.
8. There are a couple of different styles of written letters, sort of like our cursive and printing. The formal one you see on signs, and the one that’s most commonly taught, is Uchen (and that’s the one I’ve been learning). The less formal one is Ume and is characterized by a lot of vertical lines and sweeping curves above/below the main letters. There’s a third, Khug, but I don’t know much about that.

There’s a free Tibetan font that was programmed by a Sera monk. His website is in Tibetan, so here’s an English-language web page about him and the font: http://www.tibetangeeks.com/geeks/lobsang_monlam/

Another thing that’s been helpful for me is listening to, and looking at, Tibetan-language news broadcasts. There are a couple of good sources for those: Radio Free Asia and Phayul (which means “country” in Tibetan). I’ve been downloading broadcasts from RFA to my iPod and falling asleep listening to them. Since I spent some time in Tibet and heard plenty of Tibetan while I was there, maybe there’s something stored in my brain that I’m not fully aware of. If not, just hearing the sounds and beginning to recognize a word here and there certainly can’t hurt.

I had my first Tibetan lesson on Friday. I’m very excited about learning this language. I speak a tad of Spanish and French and seem to inexplicably understand some German, but I don’t *really* speak anything other than English. Theoretically, Tibetan is kind of ridiculous to learn…possibly even less useful than Finnish. But since I’m hoping to do lots more Tibet-related stuff, I think it will be very useful. The hardest part is learning a new alphabet that corresponds to sounds we don’t have in English. But, I’m using my synesthesia to my advantage; I realized that I can associate the sounds with colors and then work to color-code the symbols in my mind. It’s still hard, but it will be well worth it when I can speak Tibetan!

My teacher recommended these pages for assistance learning, and since I had such a hard time knowing which Tibetan language resources were most useful/usable before I started lessons, I’m including them here:

For learning how to write Tibetan script: http://chris.fynn.googlepages.com/howtowritethetibetanscript

For learning how to say the syllables: http://www.tibetanlibrary.org/library/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=93&Itemid=137&lang=en

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:

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!

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.

…in about 3 weeks! There’s nothing I could say to properly describe my excitement.

Several years ago I had the opportunity to see the creation, and dispersal, of two sand mandalas (by Tibetan Buddhist monks)–this is from the dispersal, in Half Moon Bay, of the second one.

…and here’s a video of the ceremony where they swept it up, beforehand. Throat singing is so awesome.

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.

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.

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!

Katie is more industrious than I (and still stuck in Tokyo to boot) so has posted a few photos of our trip!