Daily Photos - Page 11 - James Hill Photography - Efland, NC - jmhphoto.com

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James Hill > Found this yesterday - I shot it last September and, like so many things I shoot, it sat unattended and all but forgotten, deep inside a computer hard drive as nothing more than a bunch of bits. I tend to store a tremendous number of pictures that I haven't taken time to edit, print, or share. I guess my reasoning has been that I'll be old and feeble one day and I will have plenty of time to edit photos then, when I might not be able to go out and make new ones. I'm not so sure that's a good plan, so I've started being very heavy-handed with the delete key on each upload from the camera, (which is really kind of rewarding in a way) and I'm also slowly working my way back through the tens of thousands of images I've shot since going digital, all in an effort to cull a lot of clutter and crap from my photo archives. In essence, I guess I'm just becoming a bit better at editing my images, which is something I've never been very good at. (in the selection sense as opposed to the processing) I'd be interested to hear how some of you decide what to keep, and what hits the trash bin.

Photo info - Shot with my old Canon G2 using self-timer and it's wonderful flip out LCD so I could see what I was doing. That's it mounted on the level rod. Now that SLRs are starting to appear with live view LCDs, I really hope it's in Canon's plans to eventually offer one that can be flipped out and rotated like that. It would make composing a lot of shots so much easier. :)

James Hill > Final day of my extension tube experiment / self challenge. Thanks goes to Karina who's recent healthy food challenge gave me the idea. And thanks to everyone who commented on this weeks photos.

Here are my two favorite images from today, with an additional image at the top to add context. The small brush is sitting on a regular music CD and I used a basic clip-on lamp with a 60 watt reflector bulb as my light source. Again, I used the 50mm 1.8 with 68mm worth of extension tubes.

James Hill > Spidey-2070

Day 6 of the extension tube experiments. This shot was made with the 70-200 and 56mm of extension tubes.

I caught this guy moving out of the corner on my eye while I was shooting a bunch of small purple flowers which have popped up right beside the cabin. Apparently he's found a nice little nook in one of the logs to make his home, and that's just fine by me, as long as he continues to stay outside.

I really wish I had a little more DOF on this shot so that his eyes were a bit more in focus but I was shooting hand held due to his location on the wall - there was just no way to set up the tripod for this shot. The shots I took at smaller apertures all have motion blur. This one has been rotated 90 deg. clockwise as he was facing up the wall.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

James Hill > AU-1955

Day 5 of the extension tube experiments. I'm really liking this macro stuff. :)

What you are looking at is a very small piece of decomposed rock with some bling. The part photographed is about 1cm on the long side. I found this in a beautiful little creek which runs through a 40 acre property we surveyed last fall. As we were walking the creek, I kept noticing brilliant little glimmers of reflected sunlight in the sandy creek bed. On close inspection, I found the sand was littered with what appeared to be tiny little flakes of gold. My co-workers laughed and insisted that I had found fools gold (pyrite), but I stuck with my theory and did some research on the two just to be sure. I learned that it's somewhat common for creeks in the area to have trace amounts of gold in them. I also learned that pyrite is much harder than gold (harder than steel on the Mohs hardness scale) and the substance I found is malleable and easily deformed by a pocket knife. I seriously doubt there's enough out there to be of any great value, but it is pretty cool to pick up some rocks while hiking and break them open to find the stuff above.

James Hill > Strange Universe-1814

Day 4 of the extension tube experiments. 50mm f/1.8 and all three extension tubes - 68mm worth.

Inspired buy this image which Lavanya posted a few days ago, I decided to try my hand at shooting soap. I've now spent the better part of the evening straining my right eye trying to micro-focus on minuscule little bubbles and beads from a bottle of Bath & Body Works hand cleanser. The soap is actually an earthy green color in real life. I poured the soap into a small glass vase for this image and used a rather bright 5 LED flashlight as my light source. The blue light from the LEDs produced a pretty neutral color in the soap when I switched the camera to Daylight whitebalance, so I went with that.

Several more shots from this experiment are in my Strange Universe gallery.

James Hill > Relaxed Fit-1757

Playing around with a favorite pair of jeans, the 50mm f/1.8, and a 36mm extension tube.

James Hill > Grass-1452

A shot of Dad's lawn from a bug's perspective, looking into the setting sun.

The soft-focus was achieved by shooting through the grass which was between the lens and the blades I focused on.

I used the 70-200 2.8 with stacked 20 & 36mm extension tubes, which allowed me to focus at about 6 inches.

James Hill > Fly-1267

I found a full set of extension tubes today which I had forgotten I even owned, and since I don't own a macro lens I decided to play around with them on my 50 and 70-200 to see what I could come up with. It was absolutely great being able to focus so close to a subject! A true macro is now on my "must have" list.

Although this shot isn't a macro shot, it did end up being my favorite for the day. This tiny fly landed next to me while I was lying on the ground shooting some tiny flowers and he stayed just long enough for me to grab a few frames. Once I tried to move closer, he was gone. I love the smooth backgrounds the 70-200 provides in these close focus situations.

I think I'll challenge myself to post shots using the extension tubes for the whole week.

James Hill > WUNC-BPM-5413 Last one for the week from my concert series.

This shot shows just two of several beautifully detailed and unusual statues which sit looking out the windows of Bay 7 at the American Tobacco Campus. Link goes to a very small gallery of snaps from Bay 7.

To get the composition I wanted, I had to hold the camera firmly against the wall, which made looking through the viewfinder quite a challenge. My contortions seemed to amuse several folks standing nearby and by the time I got the shot I wanted, I turned around to find one gentleman standing directly behind me, sort of leaning into the wall and looking over me, trying to figure out just what it was that I was shooting. Of course it turned out that he's also a photographer! We took the opportunity to share a few laughs about photography as I casually brushed the brick-dust from my cheek and camera.

James Hill > WUNC-BPM-5384

Another concert shot from the archives. This one was inside Bay 7 of the American Tobacco Campus in Durham. The event was sponsored by WUNC Radio as part of their Back Porch Music Concert Series.

James Hill > Durham Warehouse Blues Series-4015

A closeup shot of Andy Coats playing his National steel guitar. This shot is from a different Warehouse Blues Concert gallery - one that I've neglected and need to revisit. Currently it's an assortment of somewhat bland color and B&W images. I was playing around with some Lightroom presets this morning and came up with this version which I like much better than B&W version I have in the gallery. When time permits, I may use it as a starting point to re-process the rest from this show.BTW, I found the "Cool Shades" Lightroom preset I used on Sarah Ji's blog, a really fantastic personal photo blog. She has a link to examples and download on her main page.Happy hump day, everyone!

Wow, the jaggies really hurt this one, especially in the thumbnail! Oh well, go X2Large for a better look.

James Hill > This is another shot from the same Warehouse Blues Concert Gallery as yesterday.

Meet Chris Turner. Chris is quite the accomplished harmonica player (and composer) who plays at such a high energy level that he's simply amazing to watch. I couldn't find video or audio online of Chris playing any Blues, but I did come across a youtube video of Chris playing "Fox Chase" which I'm guessing is an old European tune. There is also a pretty detailed bio of Chris in the info box, including a link to his personal website.

I was pretty happy with this shot, even though it's a little soft. It's about a 70% crop from the original and I was pushing the limits of Image Stabilization on my 28-135 with the exposure. I'm excited to think how much better my concert images will be this coming year with the new 70-200 f/2.8. It should make a world of difference in low light situations.

Update: I just discovered that the song Chris is playing in the youtube video is actually an old Irish tune, so I guess this post ties in with St. Paddy's Day as well. :)

James Hill > Slewfoot-4491

More from the archives.
This shot is from one of my Warehouse Blues Concert Galleries which I shot last summer. These concerts are free to the public and sponsored by the city of Durham's Parks and Recreation Dept. and the Music Maker Relief Foundation. I thoroughly enjoyed the few shows I attended last year and I hope to attend/shoot the whole series this summer.
My subject here is Slewfoot, who was born Mark McLaughlin in 1953. He began playing guitar at the age of 13 and in 1980 he started his career as a New Orleans street musician. He's a really interesting person to both watch and listen to. We had a brief yet pleasant conversation after this show and he came across as a really down to earth guy; one who's lived and seen a lot in his travels as a musician. About the only informative piece I could find online is a page at CD Baby which has a few paragraphs written by him - note: this is not an advertisement. :)
I'll be pulling a favorite from this concert series for each of my dailies this week, as my shooting time is going to be pretty limited. As always, thanks for all the kind comments on my previous dailies, and a special thank you to those who make the time to offer a little constructive criticism along the way - that's really appreciated! I know it's not exactly the norm for dailies (who has the time?!) but it is nice, all the same.
Hope everyone has had a good start to their week.

James Hill > Sunflowers-3763 Something from the archives. It's been raining pretty hard all night and morning, and it's a little too chilly outside to go wandering around in it, so I've been flipping through images from last summer. I came across my sunflower shots and thought this would be a little warmer than a rain shot from the porch. :)

James Hill > Just playing around in front of the mirror tonight. I took way too many exposures and couldn't decide on a single one to post, so you get my top 6.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Edit: I replaced the original collage with one that has all images flipped correctly. Looks a bit less like me, to me, but I guess this version is what everyone else should see. :)

Found this yesterday - I shot it last September and, like so many things I shoot, it sat unattended and all but forgotten, deep inside a computer hard drive as nothing more than a bunch of bits. I tend to store a tremendous number of pictures that I haven't taken time to edit, print, or share. I guess my reasoning has been that I'll be old and feeble one day and I will have plenty of time to edit photos then, when I might not be able to go out and make new ones. I'm not so sure that's a good plan, so I've started being very heavy-handed with the delete key on each upload from the camera, (which is really kind of rewarding in a way) and I'm also slowly working my way back through the tens of thousands of images I've shot since going digital, all in an effort to cull a lot of clutter and crap from my photo archives. In essence, I guess I'm just becoming a bit better at editing my images, which is something I've never been very good at. (in the selection sense as opposed to the processing) I'd be interested to hear how some of you decide what to keep, and what hits the trash bin.

Photo info - Shot with my old Canon G2 using self-timer and it's wonderful flip out LCD so I could see what I was doing. That's it mounted on the level rod. Now that SLRs are starting to appear with live view LCDs, I really hope it's in Canon's plans to eventually offer one that can be flipped out and rotated like that. It would make composing a lot of shots so much easier. :)

James Hill > Found this yesterday - I shot it last September and, like so many things I shoot, it sat unattended and all but forgotten, deep inside a computer hard drive as nothing more than a bunch of bits. I tend to store a tremendous number of pictures that I haven't taken time to edit, print, or share. I guess my reasoning has been that I'll be old and feeble one day and I will have plenty of time to edit photos then, when I might not be able to go out and make new ones. I'm not so sure that's a good plan, so I've started being very heavy-handed with the delete key on each upload from the camera, (which is really kind of rewarding in a way) and I'm also slowly working my way back through the tens of thousands of images I've shot since going digital, all in an effort to cull a lot of clutter and crap from my photo archives. In essence, I guess I'm just becoming a bit better at editing my images, which is something I've never been very good at. (in the selection sense as opposed to the processing) I'd be interested to hear how some of you decide what to keep, and what hits the trash bin.

Photo info - Shot with my old Canon G2 using self-timer and it's wonderful flip out LCD so I could see what I was doing. That's it mounted on the level rod. Now that SLRs are starting to appear with live view LCDs, I really hope it's in Canon's plans to eventually offer one that can be flipped out and rotated like that. It would make composing a lot of shots so much easier. :)

Found this yesterday - I shot it last September and, like so many things I shoot, it sat unattended and all but forgotten, deep inside a computer hard drive as nothing more than a bunch of bits. I tend to store a tremendous number of pictures that I haven't taken time to edit, print, or share. I guess my reasoning has been that I'll be old and feeble one day and I will have plenty of time to edit photos then, when I might not be able to go out and make new ones. I'm not so sure that's a good plan, so I've started being very heavy-handed with the delete key on each upload from the camera, (which is really kind of rewarding in a way) and I'm also slowly working my way back through the tens of thousands of images I've shot since going digital, all in an effort to cull a lot of clutter and crap from my photo archives. In essence, I guess I'm just becoming a bit better at editing my images, which is something I've never been very good at. (in the selection sense as opposed to the processing) I'd be interested to hear how some of you decide what to keep, and what hits the trash bin.

Photo info - Shot with my old Canon G2 using self-timer and it's wonderful flip out LCD so I could see what I was doing. That's it mounted on the level rod. Now that SLRs are starting to appear with live view LCDs, I really hope it's in Canon's plans to eventually offer one that can be flipped out and rotated like that. It would make composing a lot of shots so much easier. :)

Camera: Canon (Canon Powershot G2) |

more details: exif |

original size: 1482px x 2223px |

Current: 300px x 450px |

Other sizes: S • Medium • L |

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