A New Portfolio and a New Gallery

I'm in a very happy place tonight. And I'm feeling something I haven't felt in about five years. It's a feeling of putting a part of me out there that means more to me than anything else that I do. When I make photographs I always say I make them for myself- I make what pleases me. That is true today and hopefully will always be true.

There is another part of making a photograph that I enjoy and that is sharing it with the world out there. It's easy now to put images on a website that can be viewed instantly all over the world. That is very exciting. But on a more intimate and much more rewarding level, I really enjoy hanging my work in a gallery for people to view in a more personal manner.

It's not that I hope everyone likes my work because I really don't want that. If I create something everyone likes that probably means I made something a little too ordinary. No, if some people don't get it, then that usually means I'm on to something.

But you can only really experience that kind of a response in a gallery setting. I can't really see the reaction of someone in Australia looking at my work on the web. However, I can be a fly on the wall off in the corner of a gallery quietly watching from across the room as someone reacts to my photography. It's a very powerful event to me.

I once saw a woman walking through a group show I was in, pausing at the various art from the other artists showing with me. Then she turned the corner to face my wall and I heard this very audible sigh. It was actually more like "ohhhhhh." But it was clearly involuntary on her part. It was amazing. One of my photographs caused her to react in a way that apparently was very moving to her. I will never forget that as long as I live. I'm so lucky to have witnessed it. I walked out of the room to give her time after that. It would have been impolite to intrude on her moment any more I think.

So why all this talk about galleries? Well tonight after five years of not exhibiting my work in public, I brought a couple of my portfolios in to a great gallery here in Chicago called Echo Gallery. It's run by two amazing people, Derek and Veronika, who couldn't be any nicer or more welcoming. We've been joking, a little more pointedly lately, how come I haven't brought my book in to show them to be a part of their gallery for... well five years now. Every time I see them they always say, "Where in the world have you been? So when are you going to bring you book in?"

Even tonight I got the usual, "Well look who finally showed up again," from both of them! And rightly so. I think before I went out to seek a gallery to show my work again, I wanted to make sure I was in a creative space both literally and figuratively. It's not that I haven't been shooting the last five years because I have. But I remember the last time I exhibited I was racing to meet the deadlines of the show and getting all my work framed and delivered and I never really felt like I put my best foot forward because I simply wasn't organized. I wasn't working in a physical space at home that I had enough room to lay everything out and properly prepare for the show.

So I told myself I wouldn't exhibit again until I fixed that. And now I have. I'm in a beautiful new space that I have room to create and organize and I don't have to keep moving projects from one pile to the next because I'm trying to do too much in a tiny little area. I finally feel like I have room to breathe.

So my friend Laura and I went to Echo tonight. After giving me the well deserved shit I had earned for being such a stranger, he welcomed us in and we had a great time catching up with him and Veronika and all the other artists there. Ken Keirns is one of those great artists who lets his work do the talking. He is such a soft spoken warm man who quietly makes really tremendous art. Art that's smart too. I've always loved his work and it was great to see him again.

I also bumped into Richard Cornborg, who has now retired from driving his bulldozer and now paints full time. Good for him. It was good to see the '05 on his work in the gallery. Always good to see fresh work from artists I know.

Since I had spent so much of my day putting the final touches on my new portfolio today, printing out the last few new images for it, I really forgot to eat anything more than an orange all day, I was running out of gas. So since Derek invited us to a little after hours party after the gallery closed Laura and I decided we'd better get me something to eat before I fell over. We grabbed a bite at Cleo's down the street and then headed back to the party.


And it was there that Derek and Veronika finally got a chance to sit down and look at my books. It was a very humbling and wonderful experience. They see a lot of art and they really said some nice things about mine. I felt very warm and excited. I think it has been seven or eight years since I showed a book to a gallery. It felt very good to do it again.

This is one of the images in my new book. It's B&W film but sometimes I scan my B&W negatives in color because the grey film sometimes makes the scanner think it's a color negative and the image is a little golden or sepia or in this case, orange. But it's B&W film all the same. I made this image last year, but I've never shown it to anyone. So it looks like I'll finally be showing again in public. We still have to work out the dates, but I imagine it will be some time in the fall or early winter. Very exciting. I'm going to go to sleep tonight with a big smile on my face.

Hard to focus with play on the mind

I think what I've been going through the last week is very interesting. I've been in the mood to play. Not really in the mood to work. I think for those who know me, that's a good thing. I work an awful lot. The film editing has been really relentless lately, and then it's been working late into the night on scanning and organizing everything from the recent shoots. Jillian Ann's music video needs some more attention as well. These are all good things. But I want to play.

And so I have. It might also be that I feel a little in limbo between two trips right now. The trip to Vegas was amazing in a non-Vegas kind of way and shortly I'll be jetting off to Paris, so I think it has been difficult to seriously concentrate on anything serious at the moment. I know I deserve a little down time. It's just that it seems that there are a lot of people who rely on the "Billy-Machine" and I have not really been as ready to toss away my personal time to accomplish ever single task that might be expected of me. I think I got a little taste of time off... not knowing what time it was or even what day of the week, and it seems like it's been almost two years since I've not been under some kind of series of deadlines. The taste has made me hungry for more.

So world... pardon me while I blow you off for a while. You know... all work and no play...

I've seen too many talented people just chuck it all in the last few years because they forgot to play. I don't intend to be one of them.

And so I will go to Paris and play. Morgan is coming with me. It should be great fun. Here we are on top of the Rio hotel in Vegas.

Notes from Vegas

At this time last week, Morgan, Ryan and I had just finished a fabulous meal at Prime at the Bellagio and we were just making our way to see Cirque du Soliel's O. What an amazing show, but before I get into that, I must catch up on some entries from last week that I never got a chance to post. I had five days without any internet access. It was actually rather pleasant for a change. I wrote in the morning, but had no way to get it online, so here it is... I'll catch up with the rest of the trip later.

MONDAY AUG 8 10AM

Survived the first day in Vegas with only a small spongy feeling in my head this morning. It's a funny place for me to be because I really don't like to gamble. I prefer the real Venice in Italy to the Venetian Hotel here. Ditto for the Eiffel Tower.

So then why am I here then? Well I used to have this thing I called the "cement wall" test. I always thought my good friends and I could always have a great time together even if we were just doing the most boring thing imaginable - such as sitting on a plain, fairly uncomfortable cement wall. You know those short little cement walls that might line a walkway or something like that? That's what I'm talking about.

So I think I mentioned last time that my good friends Venessa and Justin are getting married here. And my traveling companions are The Hughes sisters, Ryan and Morgan who are at the top of my cement wall list.

We landed at noon on Sunday and were already sitting at The Big Apple Bar having cosmopolitans before we even checked in at New York New York. That pretty much set the tone for the first day. Lots of fun, walking, laughing, shopping, walking, getting annoyed at the people walking in front of us who clearly don't know busy street walking etiquette. C'mon people, if you're going to rubberneck, at least pull over! Don't walk five abreast on a narrow sidewalk. That sort of thing.

But other than the occasional oblivious tourist family, it's been non-stop hilarity.

I've known Ryan for probably about five years. She's really become one of my best friends in that time. Over the course of the last year we've more or less had a standing date set aside once a week for an evening of cosmos. Lot's of fun, talking, debating the important life questions. Figuring it all out. Supporting each other. So it's great to be here with here for some extended quality time.

Her sister Morgan I've only recently had the pleasure of getting to know. Maybe about a year or so on a really close level. Perhaps because I'm already so close to Ryan, Morgan and I have become fast friends and had some amazing talks in the past few months. I helped Morgan pick up a little Canon digital camera before we left Chicago, and I have to say, one of my favorite things has been running around "capturing the moment in pictures" here. We've been putting a little slide show together when we get back to our room at night. Of course, unless we erase the memory cards before we come home, we're going to be breaking the whatever-happens-in-Vegas-stays-in-Vegas mantra, but the photos are too funny to even think such thoughts! We're having such a great time.

Plus Morgan has been asking me to teach her a little about photography while we're here, so we've been spending lots of time talking about the rule of thirds, not always centering the subject in the frame, dutching angles, slow shutter sync and other little things like that. She's definitely got a good eye. So good in fact that I haven't taken any photos here myself yet. We both laughed yesterday that she hasn't seen me pull my big Nikon out yet. And yes it's because I think she and her little Elf are doing the job. I often bring my cameras to Vegas when I visit, but I always have a hard time finding subject matter that I want to make a serious image of. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that nothing is real here.

I'll have to think about that for a little while.

So I got up this morning and headed out to give the sisters a little time to get ready. I went out and sat near the Brooklyn Bridge. As I sat down on a bench near one of the arches the bench shifted a little bit. Hmmm. Not bolted down to keep people from running off with it. This is definitely not New York City.

TUESDAY AUG 9 9:30AM

I'm a lucky, lucky man. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to describe what I'm feeling this morning, but I'll try. The three of us have all been reading The Alchemist. I'm the last one to borrow it, and I'm almost finished with it. So we're all sort of in a very thoughtful place these days concerning what we're doing with our lives.

Late last night in the middle of a very loud bar called the Voodoo lounge on top of the Rio hotel we had one of those discussions that to even try to discuss it now would cheapen it. I love Morgan and Ryan and they really inspire me. They're both beautiful, but in their case the really intriguing part is that "the lights are on AND someone is most definitely home." Very intelligent and engaging these two.

They said some things to me last night that I will never forget. I'm humbled and grateful for their kind words. I do try to go about my life trying to put good out there. Positive energy. Good juju as my friend Melissa calls it. It's one of those things you just do, and you don't really think or talk about it. It's even a little weird taking about it now. So to hear Morgan and Ryan take some time to take turns telling me about all the things they love about me and what I'm trying to do in my life... well the DJ and the music and the people all around us just sort of melted away. Like I said, I could never repeat what was said. It would dishonor it. But I know this morning, there are still tears welling up in my eyes about it. I'm a lucky, lucky man.

And then we went outside on the roof and danced and danced. I think we pretty much cleared the dance floor by the end. Me and my two beautiful friends out under the stars looking down on the bright lights of Vegas. Perfect.

Since we try not to do much planning of any kind... we're on vacation, you know... I can't say exactly what we'll be up to today. It might involve going out dress shopping today again. We found a fabulous Betsy Johnson for Ryan yesterday. It's part of the new fall collection and it's amazing. She wore it out last night and she and Morgan stole the show everywhere we were last night. I'll have lots of fun photographing her in that as well.

I think we're going to try to find something for Morgan today. It's always fun to go shopping with those two. It allows me to let my inner fashionista come out and play. Exploring, trying on, spinning, trying on some more. Great fun.

I'm sure there will be some pool time as well. I have really been enjoying not being on a schedule. It seems like for the last three or four months every minute of my life has been reserved for something or another. Even minutes I didn't really have. I've been borrowing so heavily against my sleeping minutes that it's amazing I've managed to stay vertical all this time. So yes, I'm enjoying not knowing what day it is or what time it is. A very needed change for a few days.

Later tonight we'll be seeing the first of two Cirque du Soleil shows we have tickets for. Zumanity is the Cirque show I've always wondered about in my head watching all the touring Cirque shows that have come through Chicago the last 12 years or so. I think I've only missed one in all that time. The performers are all such amazing examples of human physical beauty, lyrical strength and grace. Just about the time the thought crosses my mind, whoever I'm with usually turns to me and says, "Can you imagine what their sex lives must be like?" So I guess we'll find out tonight.

Then tomorrow we're seeing O. I'm told it's the best show that Cirque du Soleil has ever created. Should be an incredible thing to experience. All of their shows are. You're just transported to another place. If you haven't experienced Cirque du Soleil, do yourself a favor.

I'm back and better...

Okay, that was a strange weekend. Life seems better again on this side of it. I have wonderful entries to post from my trip to Vegas with my two fabulous friends Ryan and Morgan. But I'll have to do that another time when I am not in need of sleep. Here's a little something from our trip to Vegas together. We had such a great time seeing great shows, playing dress-up and having random photoshoots in hotel lobbies, bars, elevators and on the strip just to name a few. I couldn't have asked for more wonderful traveling companions. This photo we took right after seeing Cirque du Soleil's O. I was moved to tears several times during the performance. What an amazing example of humans doing and imagining incredible things.

confused and seething

Wow... This is probably not a good night to be posting in public. I'm in a fowl mood tonight. I think I let some old demons back into my house and they're tearing the place up and they won't leave. What a strange mix of confused, sad, furious, hopelessness... and they're all turned up to 11 tonight.

I guess I don't want to get into specifics of why just here... I'd probably regret that tomorrow. But man, I've been pacing around like a caged animal tonight. Even the usually calming effect of installing hardware and software onto a pair of old computers tonight has done nothing to dull the emotions.

I feel like if I go to bed I'll just toss and turn all night and get more frustrated. I feel like if I stay up I'll continue to whip myself up into a dervish-like frenzy. I can feel the back of my neck tightening up already.

Wow... okay writing isn't helping. I'm going to try something else.

Off to Vegas Baby!

The limo arrives at 7:15am tomorrow morning. If you're going to have a rock star time in Vegas, you've got to rock start it off right! Me and the Hughes sisters are heading out for a few days in the sun. I think the three of us are all in need of a little R&R. Maybe a little pampering as well.

My good friends Venessa and Justin are getting hitched on the lawn of the Flamingo on Monday. I love a wedding in the desert in August, right? I'm pretty sure we all have to stand on one leg like flamingos during the ceremony. I've been practicing. Justin and Venessa are amazing musicians. Justin is in a great hip-hop band called Farm Crew. And Venessa is getting her songs together and singing on a few Farm Crew tracks and pretty much blowing people away with her incredible voice. They both are full of talent, those two.

You can here some of their music on the Farm Crew website.

I should be packing for the trip, but it's funny, ever since I started traveling internationally, flying anywhere domestically seems like taking a cab across town and I don't really sweat getting ready for the short trips like I used to. I figure if I forget something, I'll be in a big city and I can get anything I might forget there.

So here I am scanning more photos from the Jillian Ann shoot and making disks for Ann Marie from her great shoot a week and a half ago. We were shooting for a website called Culture Junkie . They have cool T-shirts and underwear and shoes... but alas... no photos of them being worn by a fabulous model like Ann Marie. That should be rectified soon.

Here are a couple of the photos from the shoot. There are so many more great ones. One of the things I love about shooting Ann Marie is that her personality really comes through in these images. I don't usually shoot "assignments" like this. I usually just stick to making art so to speak, so it was fun to try to mix the commercial with the art.

Okay, now I must throw some things in a suitcase and hit the sack. Viva Las Vegas!

The Government Invades My Art

Talk about a headline, huh? But it's true. Every once in a while I get a postcard back Return to Sender because someone has moved or something altogether random. Today I got one of the July postcards back because my friends Bob and Sue have moved a block away from where they used to live, and for some reason their mail... or at least this postcard didn't figure out their new locale.

Like I said, it happens fairly regularly on a mailing list as large as mine. But this time I noticed something a little different on the front of the postcard. On top of my Billy Sheahan Photography logo was stamped "ARMY" so big you couldn't miss it and their little Army of One star logo was right next to it. Instead of the usual post office cancel stamp that you usually see over your original stamp, here was a little advertisement for the US Army which, according to the stamp on my logo, is celebrating their 230th year.

I guess the thing that bothered me the most was that the ARMY stamp was not on the stamp side of the postcard, in fact my 23 cent stamp is completely clean... I may have to peel it off and use it again. Instead, the ARMY stamp is on the art side of the postcard, like I said, covering my logo and the corner of the photograph.

A couple of weeks ago I met a friend of a friend who happens to be serving in the army. He's home on leave for another few months before he'll probably have to go back to Iraq for an undermined amount of time. Nice guy. In fact, he's the first person I've met that I can say that I know who has been to Iraq with the US armed forces. Odd that I don't know anyone else really.

So when I say I was bothered by the ARMY's little intrusion into my postcard space I don't mean it as a slam against guys like Joe. The men and women who signed up are there because that's what they believe in, simple as that. However, I do have an issue when I feel like the government starts to manipulate people into joining up. I've heard some crazy stories that I won't get into here.

Basically the whole point of this little rant is that I don't want the ARMY getting a free ride on my art. My postcards go all over the US and even outside of this country and considering how I feel about what the current administration is doing in regards to relations with the rest of the world, I really don't want such a blatant pro-army statement anywhere near my photography. I really did feel invaded. Let them advertise somewhere else.

Other than that...

I had another really good day today. The 35,000 photographs scanning project is finally back up to full steam after the move. Two computers scanning as many negatives as I can load during the day. I figure I'm probably about four thousand in which actually means I'm a little behind schedule because I didn't do any scanning during the two months it took to pack, move, renovate, unpack and set back up. I started in November of 2004 and I figure its a two year project. I did three rolls today which is twice or three times as many as I usually do. I must be hungry to get back at it.

People always ask me if I still shoot film now that I have digital equipment. Oh yeah. Film has a different flavor, especially in B&W, than digital does. It has a slightly different texture that probably most people wouldn't notice, but I do. Pretty much at every shoot I do I shoot both film and digital. And although it's not the main reason, but one of the reasons is that the digital buffers in the cameras are still so slow that if I shoot in the highest quality mode, which I do, I'm always waiting for the camera to save the images to the smart card. That's when I pick up my film camera and keep shooting so as not to lose the momentum of the shoot. So I end up with about half digital and half film from any given shoot. The digital I usually keep in color and the film I usually shoot is B&W.

And while in the last few years I feel I have learned how to compose using color as an element, there is nothing like the pure emotion that is present in a good B&W photograph. Sometimes color is just distracting. Although when I'm shooting fashion sometimes the color is as important as the emotion.

Jillian just finished going through the color images from our shoot and sent me her favorites... 150 of them! Always a good sign when your muse likes that many of the images the two of you created! I just got off the phone with her tonight... another middle of the night conversation... and I think it's clear that both she and I need to step away from our computers... she just spent 15 hours in front of hers and it's almost 3am and I'm still in front of mine, writing and loading negatives... we need to just get up and slowly back away... it's just that there are so many pretty images... it's hard to walk away.

Wait 'til she sees the B&W ones!

Around the Horn.. and Some Help

My day started before it ended today. I got one of those nasty 10pm second winds again and ended up staying up all night attacking a ridiculous stack of papers on my desk. By 2am I could see the desk top and by 3am I had room to set up my redundant hard drives that every night automatically backs up all my photographs... an important consideration when you have thousands upon thousand of images. I've been a bit nervous about not having them in operation since the big move.

So when 3am rolled around, across the pond in Manchester, England my friend Monkaey was already in her mid-morning there and I caught her online. We chatted for a great hour and then it was time for what was really only a nap for a couple of hours. It's funny how far away she is, but we always manage to catch up online either by chat or now with Skype, which is just too cool for words because you can talk long distance to your friends with nothing more than your computers. Clear as a bell too!

This month, Monkaey is celebrating her first year anniversary in the UK and I'm mighty impressed. Not that there haven't been times when I wanted to chuck it all here in the last few years with this current freakshow of an administration and head to a more reasonable country, but she has managed to carve out a little living for herself in addition to working on her documentaries, one of which arrived in the mail for me today. Can't wait to check it out. Nice work Monk. I raise my pint to you!

Tonight then consisted of going through and choosing a few dozen more photographs from 2001 that I'm working on these days. My friend Heather has graciously inquired about helping me with the touching up of some of my film and that's a helping hand I'm no going to turn down. Film is beautiful but inevitably during the developing and later the scanning process the negatives can really pick up the dust. She says I can pay her in waffles and beer for her efforts, but I think I make have to come up with a more proper arrangement unless her landlord really likes waffles and beer as well. So I've just finished making her a disk with enough images to pick a few to try out and I'll pass that along tomorrow. This is sort of a trial run. I know she's got mad-retouching skillz, but we'll have to see how she feels after squinting at a slew of naked/nearly naked models. :)

Somebody's got to do it, right?


Here's one from that series that I'm considering for the August postcard. This is from the first time I photographed this woman who eventually became one of my favorite muses and friends. It's not often that a first shoot goes so well, but the planets really seemed to be lining up like crazy on this one!