Photography New Look Jon Hillenbrand, April 25, 2010October 17, 2019 I’m giving a new look to my blog. The photos will be larger, EXIF data like shutter speed, f/stop, ISO and camera type will be posted in the left column and links to other blog entries are now at the bottom of each page. Background and text colors of the blog will…
Poetry The Perils of an Open Mind Jon Hillenbrand, April 23, 2010December 30, 2015 Absolutes of ideology are succulent butter to people who are in the checklist stage of preparing to sail with Greenpeace, pasting enlarged dead baby photos to poster boards, annoying their coworkers into voting for someone or screaming about the dangers of running with scissors.
Photography Leadworks of Time Jon Hillenbrand, April 17, 2010October 17, 2019 Tonight I had dinner with someone who asked me about having a backup plan if the whole photography thing didn’t work out. I thought for a while and responded that most of my career has been spent in the less-affluent side of things due to the fact that I never…
Poetry The Direction Jon Hillenbrand, April 4, 2010December 30, 2015 Morality is a giant flock of birds, every one joining and leaving as necessary to fulfill their immediate ambitions, the overall shape and direction coming from the collective emergence of the many. There are those who would enliven the flock and those who would laugh at its destruction. Today I…
Photography Easter Bunny Kills 9. Escapes. Jon Hillenbrand, April 3, 2010October 17, 2019 After an exhaustive five-minute Google search on egg-related death statistics in America and coming up with almost no usable results, I stumbled across a very interesting fact about the Black Widow Spider. As some of you may already know, the Black Widow Spider is named for her truly confusing behavior of killing…
Photography Unfettered Brain Jon Hillenbrand, April 2, 2010October 17, 2019 Tonight as my sister, niece and I looked out from the roof-top deck at the rising dusk, my niece said, “Good morning, night.” Even though she is three, I am inspired by her sideways approach to everyday things. One day, after I sang the phrase, “too many monkeys,” during a…
Photography Flag Day Jon Hillenbrand, March 31, 2010October 17, 2019 A good photo is knowing where to stand. – Ansel Adams As someone who is often asked for advice on photography, I usually tuck this quote in right after giving an overview of the bucket analogy, three-point lighting and the two-thirds rule. To me, it all comes down to this: knowing where to stand. …
Photography Techo-f****d Jon Hillenbrand, March 31, 2010October 17, 2019 I just wrote a whole blog post with tags and photos while laying here in bed typing with my thumbs into my “smartphone”. Amazing how far technology has taken us. But after taking the photo, the application crashed erasing the whole post and ruining the whole mystique.
Photography Remember your audience Jon Hillenbrand, March 29, 2010October 17, 2019 I shot Billy Corgan for a benefit concert the other night. Though he was donating his time, he made a few comments to the crowd which reminded me that contempt for the audience is not always made up for by expert guitar picking. This reminded me of the axiom, “Remember…
Poetry Chaotic Soul Jon Hillenbrand, March 28, 2010December 30, 2015 Driving with purpose seemed to dry the aqueous pressure behind my eyes as the shrinking distance between my soul and that of my parents stretched the road and all its travelers into panoramic time lapsed smears. I was glad for the speed of other enthusiasts and procrastinations as it hid my…
Photography The Bunker Jon Hillenbrand, March 10, 2010October 17, 2019 When I lived down in Momence, IL, or “The Kank” as I like to refer to it (Kankakee Valley area about 90 minutes south of Chicago), I often came home to a dark Hill House-esque pink cottage which teased me with its Pepto crust and screwy center. To say that I believed…
Photography :| (unamused) Jon Hillenbrand, February 23, 2010October 17, 2019 Today during a studio shoot, I had an interesting interchange with an older woman who volunteered to be a model for a set of ads we are putting together for the launch of a new wing to a hospital: SUBJECT: “I own my own ad agency, so I know all about…
Photography The Long View Jon Hillenbrand, February 17, 2010October 17, 2019 Sometimes I can feel the neurons in my head recharging to execute a wrong decision once again. And in that shiver of a moment, I sometimes see the long view of my life stretched out before me like bolts of drying linen across the stone floor of time. Thoughts meander…
Photography Fate of the Created Jon Hillenbrand, February 4, 2010October 17, 2019 Would it bother you to know that you were created in a lab? That your insides were not the result of slow evolutionary processes but of the genius machinations of a scientist? Sometimes I wish I had a robotic hand like in Terminator 2, but then I look at my natural hand with…
Photography Cowboy Up Jon Hillenbrand, January 25, 2010October 17, 2019 Today I had a great photo shoot. I was tasked with photographing a group of 7-year-olds who all have movement disorders. When I asked for a definition of that, one of the supervisors said that they weren’t especially good at coordinating their left and right sides. So, for example, one of the kids…