For future posts to this blog, go to www.jonhillenbrand.com.

You know that feeling when you look at older technology and marvel at the intricacies of their jeweled engineering?  I have named this feeling technostalgia.  Today, I was playing with a very old lens, an 85mm f/2 AI-S Nikkor lens which has no motors, no chips, no auto-focus, no communication with the camera, nothing.  But what it does have is all metal construction, super smooth focusing, buttery soft bokeh, incredible sharpness and a nice compact body.  It’s also frighteningly faster and sharper than the lenses I use every day other than the 105mm macro and 50mm.  There’s a great review of this lens on Ken Rockwell’s website.  The fun thing about Nikon is that these old lenses can still be used on the new bodies.  Even on my old D100, the lens works great with the camera.  No communication between the lens and body, but with digital photography, you see your results instantly, so you’re good to go after some quick baseline tests.

Funny how we live in this time of old and new technologies competing for our attentions.  Today I watched a waveform open and close in realtime on my touch screen cell phone as I left myself a message of possible blog topics.  Later, I looked up some creative tips and tricks on how to mess with Polaroid Spectra film (I found a brand new camera and about 20 packs of film recently).  Then I played with a lens designed in the early 90′s and wished my newer lenses were made as well.

Funny how things work in the Corporate World.  After 5 years of being blocked, Flickr was recently freed from the shackles of Big Brother’s proxy at my work.  All it took was a single phone call from someone obviously much more important than I.  Now, instead of having to bring images home on a jumpdrive and maybe uploading them to Flickr from my personal computer, if I’m not too tired from a long day, I can upload photos directly to my account as soon as I’m done editing them on my work computer.  I believe I can even do it directly from Lightroom.

So stay tuned to see many more images from me in the near future posted on Flickr.  I’m going to try to merge it into my regular workflow.  http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonhillenbrand/

I had to shoot an annual meeting for a women’s group the other day.  The client wasn’t asking for anything special, just some images to put on a newsletter, in a website or wherever they could find space.  So I took the requisite pairings and crowd shots but then later concentrated on the very pretty country club setting where the event was being held.  But after I captured some nice architectural shots, I was faced with a room full of people starting to sit down to eat.   I didn’t think anything that I shot during this time would be useful, so I decided to just shoot whatever I wanted.  The attendees were still glad-handing so I took some surreptitious shots with my 105mm macro.  But instead of the usual portrait arrangement of having the subject look across the frame while they sit pretty on the 3rds lines, I decided to use as much of the width of the frame as possible.  I would place an individual on the extreme ends of the image with a background of pure bokeh behind them.  The women had become used to me and so were not aware I was shooting them individually.  So I was getting some fantastic facial expressions, the kind you see when high-brow people are gossiping.  The results were amazing.  Getting a raised eyebrow, a fed-up guffaw or an overly amused woman presented alone on a blank background was so much fun.  Each face was like a sculpture.  For the first time in a long time, I felt like I had discovered something new by intentionally breaking the rules that exist to ensure the ability to publish the photos I take.  It’s almost as if not caring about their “publishability” allowed me to see in a way I hadn’t looked in a while.  I’ve done this recently with some of the editing I’ve done to building exteriors I never thought would see the light of day.  And the result is that yesterday, my boss said she was going to print up one of those building images and present it to the president of the hospital as a gift.

I guess ignoring the consequences is sometimes the best way to evolve as creative creatures.

The red door dustily banged open temporarily scrubbing the dirty grout of the men’s conversation. She paused there in the opening, a sudden wind taking its cue to wrap around her silken form the particles of the failing daylight.  Her swollen pout threw daggers at the men, her final words a commandment, a gale force whisper.  The men dispersed, their eyes following their smiles down to the gutter.  Slithering down the steps, dark tendril hair reaching out against the street lamps, her form rocked from side to side, the machinations of her walk hinted at behind taut clothing undecorated by intimacy.  From my vantage point, I wondered what words she spoke to fill the men with such fear.  But then, without realizing my blundering, I found myself staring at her.  Her twin souls locked with mine, reaching toward me with a purpose as I backed away.  I tried to ignore her as she strode directly toward me like a predator.  Her heels announced their devious intention like the impolite hammering of secret police at the door.  I klutzed myself back into a park bench in time for her sharpened index finger to pierce my chest.  She spread her lips past glistening teeth and inhaled, lips approaching the curve of my left ear, switch blade fingernails gleaming near my right. 

Psychologists call it repression, my inability to remember the length or breadth of her words to me.  It’s the brain’s way of handling a trauma.  All I remember is the waterfall of love that fell from my heart the moment she spoke, the emotion, the liquid singularity.  I am looking at my body floating in the sunbeams dividing the ocean in an endless dance.

Some of you will simply not be with me during this post.  But today I was talking to a friend of mine on the phone and she mentioned that she was going into a Costco to buy some food in good ol’ American portions.  So I excitedly asked her to look and see if they had Pepperoni Pita Stuffs.  See, for those of you who know me well, you know of the existence of my Unicorn Food (that’s the food that you loved, but which is no longer available to you).  The Pita Stuffs were discontinued years ago I’m guessing because I haven’t been able to find it since before the internet was big.  I know it’s pre-internet because I can’t find it on there anywhere.

Anyway, the Pepperoni Pita Stuffs was one of those microwave-only frozen food aisle items, like a Hot Pocket, made up of a curved pita filled with various meals which you would slide into a crisping sleeve (included) and microwave for about 2 minutes.  They had Gyros Pita Stuffs which was sickeningly gross because of the onions and peppers which never do well in the microwave and they had a vegetable something which was also disgusting.  But the Pepperoni Pizza version was addictingly fantastic.  Really, the appeal was its inconsistency.  Most of the time when you microwaved it, the cheese would remain frozen in the middle.  Actually, if you microwaved it past the melting point of most known metals, the inside of the damn thing would still consist of frozen tomato sauce and cheese shreds.  But once in a while, the microwave and the crisping sleeve would synchronize somehow and the thing would turn out perfect.  Then, the taste was amazing.  I don’t smoke, but you know in the movies when after the big gun battle the sweaty dirt-covered hero finally finds a cigarette after asking everyone for like 20 minutes, he sits on the ground of a trench, leans up against the wall, lights the pinched cigarette and takes a quick fast drag and lets out a deep long relieved and relaxed smokey exhale?  That’s how it tasted; absolute cool reliefy goodness.  The closest I’ve been able to find in terms of taste is the Pepperoni-only DiGiorno Pizza.  I think they are using the same sauce.

My friend didn’t sound convinced that this was a worthy Unicorn Food item.  But I assured her that it had the same allure as one of those microwave hamburgers you get out of hospital vending machines.  You slide that sticky clear plastic door open, pull out the mystery burger, microwave it up in that ancient microwave that all hospitals seem to have, the one with the dial instead of numbers.  And it has some sort of feeling…not like a burger, but more like a piece of slightly moistened cardboard, or like pressed cat food.  It’s really bad, but a week later, you are craving one like there’s no tomorrow.  My sister says that those foods contain the additive Addicto, which is something she made up.  But if it came out years later that Addicto or some other trade name for an addictive substance was being added to food, I would totally believe it.  Coke, Pringles, Doritos, Slim Jims, they all have it.  I guess anything you can get at 7-11 has it.

Anyway, Pepperoni Pita Stuffs are awesome.  If you find them, mail me a few boxes and I’ll send you a “Jon Hillenbrand’s Blog” T-Shirt.

Maybe it was the lateness of the hour, but at the end of the work day today, the cleaning woman showed up and started speaking with such prophetic wisdom that I found myself listening intently to every sentence in her half-Haitian-half-English tongue.  She’s just like an oracle in the old Greek style.  She almost never shows up when you expect her, she’s so hard to understand that you almost pull a muscle listening and much of what she has to say is so simple as to be categorized as brilliant fact.  She’s in her late sixties and has lived a life of children and countries.  And in the opposite of the spirit of most youth, I listen to her in the hopes of some guidance that will decrypt the life I have expertly woven through the Enigma machine.  She said something like, “You work very hard, end of day, you have money and then you got no thing, you die, they money to put you in ground.  Nobody care.  Forget you.”  What I think that means is that at the end of the day, after all of my time wasted or not at work, if I don’t have something to do besides work, all I’ll have done is lived the life of a nut in a greasy inefficient machine. 

Of course, advice is often Cassandra Truth entangling the blinders-bound with things as they are.  But there are sunsets to be enjoyed out there.  And in more honest moments, I know I will look back on my life and wish I had lain in the grass more.  There’s an audible silence brought on by the wind just after your mind goes quiet, like spreading cream across a cake.  Your eyes a firmament, unfocused sparks explode like flower petals revealing knowledge of little or great import, the fruit from the garden of plenty from which only the enlightened have supped, juice escaping from the sides of your mouth and over you a benediction.  Shall I deny that which waits out in the field?

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 change depending on the color of the photos that I post.  There is also an ARCHIVE link on the top of each page with thumbnails to different pics and stories. 

Also take note of the large left and right arrows (sideways carrots?) on each page.  They move you forward and backward through the blog.

Let me know what you think.  And click around on old posts to see the new look in action!

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.  Pretendindians scream about the persecution of their ancestral 16th cousin, twice removed, feeling the genetic drawstring of history closing down their virtually imagined hardly mentioned culture as they enjoy the Redskins game while eating Taco Bell and feeling a bit guilty about modern white conveniences like air conditioning and shoes.  Everyone wants to feel like they belong, but secretly they all want to feel persecuted.  Case in point, the recent voting-in of Obama by two camps; those who would mention the historicity of such a momentous race-centered race, and those who would pretended that it didn’t matter.  I voted for McCain because I felt that his years of experience made him more qualified to do the job.  I felt this was in the spirit of the, “I have a dream,” speech given by Martin Luther King, Jr. in which he said that his hope was for a color-blind society, not one acting on the very basis of that which has been so long used to victimize.  But the two times I mentioned this, I was harshly criticized by the first camp for having an opinion on the matter, being a recipient of the “white male DNA” from my parents.  The second camp tried to convince me that oration skill outweighed hard experience.  And McCain was going to die in four years anyway.

The perils of an open mind have kept me down.  I’ve often been persecuted for not taking a stand or for taking a stand against the limiting status quo.  But I’ve learned more to stay quiet when I don’t understand something and not look like a fool to my older self when he travels back in time in his mind.  I’ve found that this makes me a better photographer as well.  Often I am faced with a situation in which I know very little about what I am shooting.  Once I am willing to capture the unexpected with a few jabs in the right direction, rather than placing people Barbie and Ken-like, avenues for beauty open up.  Most people aren’t actors or professional models.  But they have within them a bright light just waiting to shimmer in the catchlight in their eyes.  In many ways, looking back at my old photos, the ones I might regret the outcome of, it’s hard for me to criticize certain decisions if I haven’t made them.  If the variables of the universe didn’t come together, that’s not really my fault.  Sure, I’ve shot the wrong f/stop and felt like a basic idiot.  But that’s not the result of taking a stand on a forced outcome for a photo.  Keeping an open mind photographically has kept my photos fresher to me and made the experience more fun.

Recently I was teaching a girl some basics of exposure.  She relayed to me a story when she was traveling and someone told her the “correct” f/stop to use for the upcoming landscape shot.  “To shoot this landscape, you’re gonna need to be at f/18.”  As I teach, I create tabs in my mind on subjects to go back to.  And the whole discussion of ISO and shutter speed and focal length came to a crashing halt for me when I realized that her whole paradigm of thought concerning photography was based on rules of “correct” and “incorrect”.  She asked, “When I enter a room, how do I know what is the correct shutter speed and f/stop to use?”  She felt this was the first step to take before talking about capturing or creating anything with a camera.  To me, she was coming at photography in reverse.  To herself, I imagine, I was trying to teach her to fly before teaching her to walk.

I guess the problem I have is so much in life requires our weary attention that we often equate guidelines and suggestions with rules.  I often suggest to my three-year old niece during bath time not to splash too much outside of the tub because the water goes everywhere.  But that’s because one of my rules is that disorder and chaos have negative consequences.  Or maybe I don’t want to be wet.  Or maybe I am tired and want to control something.  So the simple joy of a child playing in water gets ruined a bit.  I often don’t feel like explaining the reason behind the no-splashing rule or the specific guidelines of that rule because it takes to long to describe chaos, control, empathy, tub wall height, water damage, evaporation, mineral contamination, etc.  And frankly, I doubt she’ll care long enough to listen to any of that because she just wants to splash.  So the rule gets changed into “no splashing at all”, bath time starts to suck, and soon she doesn’t want to take a bath.  Similarly with photography, there are now so many rules that it is like you can only eat huge deeply red Jonathan apples starting from one side and working your way around the circumference.  And while performing this act, you miss the untamed joy of gnashing your teeth into the fruit, feeling the juicy snap splash down your chin and maybe lobbing the half eaten wet apple as hard as you can across the beach to land in the gritty sand, just to see what it does.  Can the fun and unintended consequences of photography only be enjoyed by those who have been doing it professionally for years?  I hope not.

Language anneals ideas in the foundary of our minds as they are pressed from the imagination into workable thoughts.  This is why dictators burn books when they come into power or are threatened with the loss of it.  Ideas lead to more ideas.  The open mind conquers.  Unfortunately, when faced with uncertainty, guidelines from the elder and the experienced are bastardized into distributed religions of dogma, the result of which is a loss of love and life and opportunity while the congregations are correcting their clothing or flipping to the page of the day.  The whole point is lost.  The fatwas become a rallying cry for those who misunderstand the ideas behind the original guidelines.  And the only way forward as a species or as an individual is to keep an open mind.