The Hilliard Photographics Group: Blog

We just returned from 10 days on the road with assignments in Miami Beach and Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, Asheville, North Carolina, and Nashville, Tennessee.

In Miami Beach we photographed David Frangioni at his world-class recording studio called Audio One. This assignment for an electronics magazine featured David, his facility, and a few of the many awards he has garnered in the recording industry.

Audio One also has studios in Nashville, Boston, and Los Angeles.

The next day I received this email from David: “Joe, thank you for the great photo shoot yesterday. One of the smoothest I’ve ever done, thanks to your professionalism and photographic expertise.”

After finishing up my photo shoot in downtown Albuquerque, I decided to head up into the high country to explore the area.  I headed out historic Route 66 toward Sante Fe. There was still a little residual snow left up in the high country from the day before even though the temperature was in the 50″s.

As I drove further up the road, I discovered a cool old mining town by the name of Madrid.

These photos were taken in and around the town.

This was an old Spanish Mission from the next town up the road.

As I drove further up the road, I spied this vintage Land Rover ( 1950’s or 1960″s, I think) coming down from the hills.

We’ve been back for 2 weeks from our assignments in Nashville, Tennessee, Jacksonville, Tampa, and Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

In Nashville, we photographed the headquarters for a large health care organization and 3 home theaters for a home electronics magazine.

In Jacksonville, we photographed a corporate facility for an international banking company and  In Tampa and Fort Lauderdale we photographed health care facilities.

We put 3500 miles on the motorhome and everything worked great.  My friend, Donny Hackett of Casa Home Cinema met with me at his house and showed me the set and the pilot for his new upcoming TV show, “Motorize This” and we discussed different ways he could customize the motorhome to better meet our needs for our photography and travel comfort.   Donny is a musician  and an amazing designer of home theaters and one of the most creative people I know.  I am hoping one of the networks will pick up his show because I have lots of ideas for projects for him to motorize, and also I will be the show’s official photographer.

Check out the link to the rough cut to the pilot for his show HERE.

Next week we’re off to Arizona with magazine assignments in Tucson and Phoenix!  Tight deadlines and too many miles to drive to these.  I love Southwest Airlines!

I’ll also get to visit my good friends Kusum and Pratap and maybe get to do another hike in Sabino Canyon.

We recently photographed this amazing office which is the headquarters for The Scripps Network which includes HGTV, The Food Network, DIY Network, FLN, GAC, and sn digital.

On the way back from a photo assignment in Cincinnati, we stopped at Lake ST. Marys in Ohio and saw a collection of the amazing amphicars.  This is a car built in Germany in the 1960’s that is both a car and a boat.   It was designated as the “770″ because it could go 7 miles per hour in the water and 70 on land.  They stopped making them in 1967, but there are quite a few still out there and tons of  spare parts are still available.  I want one!

We finally were able to get the electronic files from Custom Wood Homes for one of my favorite houses ever, The Hinoki House.

Beautiful Asian inspired design.  We never got to meet the owner, but he was gracious enough to get us the keys and told us to stay as long as we liked to enjoy the house and get all of the photos we needed.  He even sent a crew over to clean up the property before we arrived and put away all of the construction materials from a walkway and fence they were working on.

It is located in western North Carolina. View the feature article here.

This image of a log home in Georgia just placed in the top 5 of the Professional Photographers of America cover competition.  Each photographer was allowed to submit 1 image and there were over 5000 entries.  That puts us in the top 1/10 of 1% of the professional photographers that submitted images.

We are very excited to be included and the image will be featured with a story in the November 2009 issue of Professional Photographer magazine.

“An incredible architectural shot.  It’s twilight, yet the maker captured everything.  He deserves a lot of credit for the exposure and execution of this image.  It’s inviting.  I want to be there.  I feel like I can touch and feel everything in the image.” - Helen Yancy, Professional Photographers of America juror, International Print Competition.

We did this photo last week to illustrate a story on train awareness.

Feature Page 1 | Feature Page 2 | Feature Page 3 | Feature Page 4

Feature Page 5 | Feature Page 6 | Feature Page 7

Check out this beautiful Arts and Crafts home designed by our friends at Helman Sechrist Architects. www.helmansechrist.com. This home is also featured in the Pella Windows selection guide as well as in the Pella Pressroom.

In July, we photographed this very cool office and conference center in downtown Cincinnati.  The structure is all glass on the side that faces Fountain Square and brings in a tremendous amount of natural light both during the day and night.