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Hi, I'm Art Hill. I specialize in pictures of Chicago but there are lots of pictures of other places and lots of flower pictures. I have a store at CafePress/WindCityArt with clothing and other items for sale. If you want to license any of these images just email me at art@WindyCityArt.com

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Daily Photos : One picture each day. In reverse order.

One picture each day. In reverse order.

Updated: Dec 27, 2009 4:22am PST

December 2009 :

Updated: Dec 27, 2009 4:56am PST

November 2009 :

Updated: Nov 24, 2009 7:12pm PST

Most Popular Photos

September 11, 2008 Our cats, Jake and Joey. They are brothers - 11 years old. We got them from a shelter when they were just a few weeks old. They are great buddies and most mornings look out our front window like this. I used to shoot a lot of pictures of them (before grandkids) but not much lately. I like this one - it represent how close they are.

January 23, 2009 Sacked
Yesterday was not a good day. I was notified at 10:00 that I was being laid off from Microsoft where I have worked for the past 8 years. Today is my last day. It was devastating news. I got my first job in 1968 and have never been fired until yesterday.
And thanks to all for the overwhelming response to my shot of Joey yesterday.

Update September 22, 2009: Imagine my surprise to see comments on this 9 month old picture today. I am still unemployed but we're getting by. Had a great summer with the grandkids. Getting used to watching how much we spend on things.

January 22, 2009 Joey
One of our 11 year old cats. He loves to gaze out the front window.

June 30, 2009 Chicago's Lakefront
I'm standing in front of the Shedd Aquarium for this shot. The tallest black building on the left is the Sears Tower. The right most black building is the 70 story Lake Point Tower, once billed as the world's tallest apartment building. The area with boats is Monroe Harbor. The area between the buildings and the water is Grant Park, proudly referred to as Chicago's "front yard,"

August 24, 2009 Joey
We never know where we're going to find him.
We'll be out of town for a few days and I'll not be online much. Have a great week.

June 11, 2009 Scarlett
I take a lot of pictures of my grandkids. It's not easy to do. I've never had much luck getting them to pose so I just shoot pictures as they play. Some days when I go through the batch I don't find any that really hit me. Lots of okay ones and a few pretty good ones. Every once in a while though I get some I really like. This is one of those. She is 2 years and 3 months old. Show me a cuter two year old :-)
I have so much fun with her.

January 28, 2009 Fish at Rain Forest Cafe
I've never had very good results shooting fish in aquariums. We had lunch at the Rain Forest Cafe and they had some large well lit tanks so I took a few pictures on the way out and thought they turned out pretty good. Not cropped, this is the full frame. And there were no crowds as there ususally are at the regular aquariums. A few more fish shots over here
http://arthill.smugmug.com/gallery/7035315_e7i3x/1/463416910_nRjBd

April 1, 2009 Chicago built of Legos
My daughter had told me that Legoland had a model of Chicago so I was expecting something that would say, fit on a ping pong table. I wasn't prepared for this incredible display that was maybe 50 feet long. The view above is less than half of the whole thing. The attention to detail was incredible. You can see more if you're interested at
http://arthill.smugmug.com/gallery/7771166_rH5J4/1/502783133_rwLPv

July 10, 2009 Water Lily in Our Pond
Often these are hard to get right with the dark water, dark red and then the white petals. And, I wish those lilly pads were green instead of yellow. But I'm pretty happy with this shot. I think these blooms are so pretty.

October 31, 2009 Happy Halloween
My daughter and granddaughters have been hard a work on jack-o-lanterns.
Our whole family was supposed to get together last night so I could get pictures of all four grandkids in their costume. My five year old grandson got the swine flu so we couldn't get together. Alas the kids won't even see each other this Halloween. I think, for a little kid, the two times you don't want to be sick are Halloween and Christmas. I don't think Kyle will even get to go trick or treating. Maybe if he has no fever this morning he can make it out for a little while this afternoon.
Update: Halloween is deteriorating rapidly for us. Now Lindsey has the fever and cough, Braden seems lethargic. Only Scarlett is okay for now. So, I'm not going to have much in the way of Halloween costume pictures. Our town has a Halloween walk this morning; Lindsey is going to miss that and probably won't be able to trick or treat. Party at her house tonight is cancelled too. Sheesh

August 4, 2009 Water Lily in Our Pond
I had to ship my camera off to Canon yesterday and they think it will be gone for 3-4 weeks, sob. So I'll have to muck along with my old Nikon Coolpix 88. I'm so hooked on DSLR's that I'm kinda bummed. But, in the big scheme of things it's a pretty minor annoyance. One thing that is nice about the old camera is that with the swivel LCD I can take shots from a low vanatage point. For this one I was actually holding the camera below the edge of the pond, Couldn't do that with my Canon :-) Anyway I guess you'll get to see if I can keep up the high standard here without my main stuff.
I want to thank everbody for the great response to my last week of posts - I've been having a pretty good run. All of those have moved up pretty quickly to prminent spots on my most popular list.

September 6, 2009 Scarlett listening to a ghost story
Lindsey and Scarlett came to our house for an impromptu sleepover. Grandma was telling them a ghost story. I liked sepia for this but didn't want to give up those blue eyes so I chose selelctive coloring.

August 17, 2009 Rising above it all
One of these days I promise to post something besides a water lily :-)
Thanks to all of you who have commented on my efforts here. I'm glad that I can share my pond with so many people.

June 1, 2009 Clematis
We planted this last year and it seems to be thriving.

July 28, 2009 Fireworks over the city
I find fireworks to be a challenging subject to begin with. Shooting them from a moving sailboat moves the difficulty up another notch. I brought a monopod and fired away. Lots of shots were no good just because of boat movement but I thought this one came out pretty good. Lots of luck involved. The fireworks display was fantastic - we heard it is even better than the 4th of July and we would agree. Shot from the Tall Ship Windy.

January 8, 2009 Our Street
Last night about 8:30. 15 second exposure. Looking North from in front of my driveway.

August 22, 2009 Our backyard
I've shown you the pond and a view from up near the house. I just wanted to sort of complete the "tour" by shooting something back toward the house. I'm standing about in the middle of the backyard. The pond is there to the left.

April 26, 2009 Daffodil
It rained most of yesterday but I managed to get out for a few minutes and found some daffodils that weren't pointing down :-) A minute after I shot this down at the corner I felt raindrops and heard thunder so I headed back to the house. Shortest walk I've ever taken.

October 22, 2009 Raised bridge on the Chicago River
I was so excited yesterday to see this. They only open the bridges at 10:00 on Wednesdays and Saturdays, only for a few weeks in the Spring and the Fall. Ever since I quit working downtown (in 2000) I just don't get a chance to see this. I think I got a few shots in 2005. We just happened to be downtown yesterday and were walking along the river when my wife said "Look, the bridge is raising". This shot is of the Wabash Avenue bridge; I'm facing West.

Update: To answer the question: The sailboats can't get back. The bridge raising is just in the Spring to let the boats into Lake Michigan and in the Fall to let them back out. A sailboat owner only makes the trip twice in a year. The rest of the time they sail in the lake. Only boats that fit under the lowered bridges actually cruise the river.

January 7, 2009 Turning Night Into Day
This is the view of our backyard from the bedroom that I use as an "office". I'm pretty excited about how this came out because this shot is at 9:00 o'clock at night! I had never taken a really long exposure and wanted to try this. It was a little difficult to even get the camera in place up against the window since my desk is right there. I got the camera precariously set against the window, set the exposure time for 25 seconds and let the camera choose the f-stop. My camera has built-in long exposure noise reduction which I turned on. That takes another 25 seconds after the picture is exposed. I was pretty happy with the result (original is at http://arthill.smugmug.com/gallery/7035315_e7i3x/1/#450586884_jQ3H3-A-LB). Still an obvious night shot with color off a little and a lot of darkness. So I opened up the RAW file, tweaked the exposure a bit and got this. Many of you may not consider this all that interesting but I am fascinated at how such a picture can be made when it is completely dark out and only those lights in the park behind my house light things up.

October 25, 2009 Our street
We finally got some sunshine yesterday afternoon after a pretty miserable couple of days. I just grabbed this shot through the windshield as we turned on to our street.

September 4, 2009 His majesty, Joey
From this position on the bannister he can monitor most of the first floor.

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