Celebration

I’m having a very quiet celebration tonight. I’m back in the scanning groove again. Knocking off more rolls of film every day on my journey to scan all 38,000 of my photographs. I’ve been back in Italy in 1993 the past few days. Ironic because my friend Jill, who you all saw in the beautiful polka dot circle dress I put up her a few weeks ago, is doing a little shopping for a gift for a friend of hers and she thought one of my images from Italy might fit the bill. She says she’s been trying to come up with something interesting to give and keeps coming back to one of my photos. I’m quite flattered.


I think I have something on the order of 1000 to 1500 images of Italy, maybe more. I haven’t finished scanning them all yet. But the nice thing is, my new copy of Apple’s Aperture just arrived and it’s been really helpful in my quest to really get a handle on all of these images, organize them and update my web galleries on a more regular basis. Yes, the new website is coming along nicely and should be up before the end of the year. It’s going to be a busy month.

Today I got an email back from my friend, photographer and director Lois Greenfield who just returned from a hugely successful series of sold out shows in Paris this month at the Theatre de la Ville. She’s been touring with this amazing show of hers called Held with the Australian Dance Theater. Stop reading this right now and go look at the Held promo video for the show, it’s really amazing. And if you ever are within 500 miles of it, treat yourself. She’s amazing. Quite an inspiration to me. We’ve gotten to collaborate on several projects over the years and I can’t say enough about her.

And although all of that is wonderful news that’s not the reason for my celebration. I’m usually a little hesitant to get into too many details of my personal life here. I mean that’s why it’s called personal, right? I like to paint with broad strokes and keep people guessing. But in this case I’ll make an exception because it’s a bit of a milestone for me.

I’ve battled my weight my whole life. Some people’s issues show up in the guise of drugs or alcohol. And while I’m no stranger to either of those, they never consumed me, even when I felt weak and alone. No I’m afraid unlike hidden track marks under a long sleeve shirt or a pint bottle hidden in a desk drawer, my self-destructive method of choice has always been food.

Recently though, with the help of some very supportive friends, I’ve begun to climb out of that hole. You see I really like what’s going on in my life right now and I want to be around a lot longer to accomplish everything I see on my horizon. I have a lot of people to thank, but the one who really poked at me and kept poking at me pretty mercilessly was my dear friend Jillian Ann. During one of her visits she marched me over to Borders and picked a couple of books off the shelf and ordered me to buy them. One was called Fit for Life.

Everyone is different and what works for one person may not work for another, but after putting that book on my shelf and letting it get dusty for a year, I picked it up a few months ago. It was a day I was really sad and for some reason, instead of eating something bad for me, I read the book. It really made sense. To make a long story probably too short to give it justice, I learned how different foods interact with your body once they’re in your stomach. Some things don’t get along and drain your body of precious energy while it tries to figure out what to do with that unholy assortment of food you call a meal.

So it’s fruit in the morning for me. A salad, sometimes with chicken or fish, sometimes not, for lunch. And steamed vegetables for dinner. Now some days it doesn’t happen quite like that, but for the most part it does and as Jillian says, “progress, not perfection.”

Oh and there’s the walking. A minimum of two miles a day but I try to do four or five as often as I can. Quite honestly I don’t only do it for the exercise although it’s been incredibly good for me. It’s really a nice time to just breathe and think and have some time to myself where I’m not knee deep in a project.

So yes. Eating properly and walking. So why the celebration?

Well my pants are falling off of me. I’ve had to cut new holes in my belts. I decided it was time to buy some new clothes tonight. But the funny thing about buying new clothes when you’ve lost weight, is your not really sure what size you are any more. I measured my pants against the new belt loop holes.

Wow. Seven inches off my waist.

So I went to my closet and looked at a few dusty items that for some reason made the move with me, but I haven’t worn in years. I put on a really nice blazer that I brought to Paris, but couldn’t button when I was there three months ago - and I could button it. Barely, but I wasn’t even close in Paris. Okay, so I was feeling saucy now. I have a great top coat that I really used to love. One of my favorite photographs of myself was taken in that years ago by a great photographer and friend named Clayton Miller, but I haven’t been able to wear it since the mid 90s.

I’ll be dammed. I could button that as well!

Wow. Speechless.

So there is a lot to celebrate these days. I have a long way to go. I’m still a pretty big guy. Still not shopping off the rack at most stores, but I’m getting closer every day. It was nice to have this little boost of self-discovery during the holiday season. Amazing really. My motivation is renewed and I feel very fortunate to be extending my life with every inch lost. And notice I’m saying inch instead of pound. I do get on the scale once every couple of months or so, but it’s not really about the pounds. It’s about the clothes. Keeping track of pounds has made me positively crazy in the past. It’s not healthy to judge myself every day on a scale. No, a surprise trip to the back of the closet seems to be more sensible to me. And it makes the celebrations a little sweeter.

The photo above is one of the “undiscovered” Italy images that I’ve been scanning this week. It’s from Florence with a sculling team heading for the Ponte Vecchio (The Old Bridge) one very overcast day. There was almost no light and I really had to push my film to get an image. It resulted in a very grainy but pleasing photograph.

Saturday Observations

Some random thoughts today.

It snowed yesterday. It was the first time I looked out the window of my new space and saw snow on the ground. Everything that I'm used to seeing out the window suddenly looked different. Clean. Peaceful. Beautiful. I'm not usually a big fan of snow and cold. I prefer warm. But lately I've been trying to appreciate winter. I'll try to photograph it more this year.

It's a beautiful sunny day. The sun is streaming in my giant windows and as I walked by a bouquet of flowers I have on my dining room table I suddenly got a strong whiff of... flowers! I looked and there they were sitting in a sun beam, so happy that they were giving off this wonderful smell that's filling my space. Wow.

I've been cleaning a closet today that has sort of been a dumping ground for the "uh... what should I do with this? I guess I'll put it in here and figure it later," stuff. Boxes from moves past. From my old film editing company when I packed up and moved almost two years ago... framed photos... a lava lamp (it actually still works)...
a flip photo frame full of photographs I forgot I had taken... interesting mobiles I had hanging above my desk there. And another box, one of the last I packed in Lincoln Park last May. It was the, "oh, just throw the rest of this stuff in there," box. Watches... DVDs... negative folders... candles... my bicycle light and battery and charger... and something I haven't been able to part with through several moves, my old baseball chest protector and shin guards from when i used to be a catcher in little league. Why can't I get rid of those old pieces of equipment? I'm really not sure, but I always seem to be rescuing them. I actually did do a pretty good job of throwing things out before I moved, so there isn't too much that I shouldn't just find a proper home for here.

I called my friends Charlie and Kim today. They were entertaining family, but we got to chat for a few minutes anyway. Of all the people I've had the pleasure to know in my adult life, Charlie was one of the first to help me find myself. A great teacher and a great friend and it was really good to hear his voice today... and Kim's too!

I'm continuing to print and frame more photographs this weekend. It's been really fun to see these images big and hanging on the wall. One image I can't find the negative for is worrying me a little. I think that's why I decided to tackle the mystery closet to see if it got misplaced in that chaos. So far no luck though. It's the negative from the Pompei image I mentioned here I while back. I really wanted to rescan it at a higher resolution with higher quality scanners than I did when I first scanned it a few years ago. I hope it turns up. Morgan helped me decode a very powerful meaning in it the other night and I really want it up on my wall here. She's amazingly insightful. I'll keep looking. And I’ll explain the meaning another time. I just want to find the original negative first.

I also found a Native American shaker that a friend of mine had giving to me years ago when I moved into my first film editing suite. It is a charm to drive away any negative energy from a space. I've had nothing but positive experiences here since I moved in, but since it's a Native American holiday this weekend I walked around the space here giving a little shake here and there... just in case. They knew and know things we still don't understand about the earth, energy and how we interact with everything around us. Shake, shake, shake.

You know I just realized that I've used the same word completely differently in the last few paragraphs and I never connected their different meanings.

Negative.

That word has very strong meaning for me. In both a good and bad sense. The good definition of that word for me is the film negatives that I have thousands of and deal with every day. They are numbered and cataloged and with the exception of the one image I seem to have misplaced, make it easy for me to find any images I've created in the last 20 years.

The bad definition of negative is what I guess I would define as not positive. I usually use it in conjunction with the word energy. And I guess you could say I deal with that definition of the word every day as well. There is a lot of negativity out there. Even at the beginning of this holiday season I can see the negativity ratcheting up a few notches already as the crush and demand of expectations takes an unnatural curve upward. I saw it trying to navigate downtown a week ago shortly after the Lighting of Michigan Avenue Holiday Parade that officially marks the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. Lots of people all trying to get back in their cars and head back out to the suburbs. How do I know that most of them are from the suburbs? Well because true city dwellers have learned to avoid over crowded events like holiday parades and Taste of Chicago like... well... like something you would avoid at all costs. All of these people impatiently trying to navigate down unfamiliar streets with overtired children and looks on their faces that question whether the last four hours were actually worth the effort, cutting each other off and flipping their middle fingers at one another. Merry what??!!

So yes... negative and negative. One brings me great joy and the other I try to minimize my contact with it when at all possible. Life is too short to allow negative people and their energy to distract me from what is truly important in my life. The people I love and my art.

And those flowers are almost singing with aroma now! Now that's positive!

The image above is one that I forgot all about from that old flip frame I found in my closet today. It's one I took during a long meandering walk through Berlin, Germany one December day. I have no idea what part of Berlin I was exploring. I just kept walking and somehow managed to find my way back to the hotel after a rewarding day of shooting before I got completely lost.

Thankful

For those of you reading in other countries, the American holiday of Thanksgiving is supposed to commemorate a meal the first European settlers had with the Native American Indians more than three hundred years ago. It was supposed to be a meal of thanks. Well we all know what happened shortly after that. The white men took pretty much everything from the Native Americans and they're still taking to this day.

So my own personal meaning for Thanksgiving tries to find a better purpose for being. Today I spent time, in person and on the phone, with people who I care a great deal about. Holidays are never perfect, but getting a chance to talk with and see the faces of people I love makes me grateful to be alive.

Some of you perhaps know how much I love you and some may not know the depth of my love for you, but no matter. Hopefully the feelings I have for you will help me to continue to put positive energy out into the world. Your inspiration and guidance are something I will never take for granted. Hopefully the art I create will be worthy of my intense gratitude for having you in my life.

Je t'aime. Merci.

Under Construction

It's been a busy but good weekend so far, and hopefully I'll have accomplished even more before my head hits the pillow tonight. It began with a strange experiment involving The Incredibles. I've been really trying to find innovating ways to learn French besides the usual iTunes lessons. As great as they are, I want to expand my exposure to la Français as much as possible. So I put on The Incredibles and watched it in English with French subtitles.

You see, when you learn French from an audio source like a book on iTunes, you learn proper pronunciation, but you don't know how to spell anything. But if you learn French from a book, you pronunciation is... well... in the case of French, all wrong. So by listening in English and watching the French on the screen I picked up a few more words and phrases. Then after a bit, I switched to French audio with English subtitles. An interesting experiment. I may continue it when I can, although I must say that with all the projects I've got going on, sitting down in front of the TV for even 20 minutes is pretty rare these days.

I'd have to say that for the first time in my life, since I was perhaps three years old, days go by without me watching TV. It's taken me a week and a half to get through the first two hours of Alexander. Not a movie that got rave reviews, I know, but I've been trying to watch it from a historic perspective. It's not that the movie is bad, I just can't sit still for any long period of time when I know I want to accomplish so much.

But if I'm learning French at the same time.... well...

And speaking of French, Morgan and I are now members of Alliance Française de Chicago. It's basically an organization that promotes French language, culture and history through classes, film, discussion and general community. I went there this last week to find out a little more and decided on the spot to get our memberships. It was really wonderful to be able to speak my broken French again after a few months. When you walk in the front door, it's like you just stepped off of a plane. The sounds of French being spoken immediately brought me back to our time in Paris. And I could say bonsoir, merci and au revoir without sounding pretentious.

On the second floor is a library or médiathèque full of French language books, magazine, DVDs and videotapes that can be checked out just like any other library as long as you're a member. As a browsed the aisles, two people were sitting at one of the tables conversing in French. I took my time exploring, enjoying the simple sounds of a conversation I didn't understand the majority of. I'm planning on taking French language classes there, possibly as early as two weeks from now. It's a difficult task to get me out of my film editing world and anywhere by 6pm, but I'm going to try it. It's just two weeks. Very intensive schedule, but as Morgan recently said in her recent blog entry, if I don't start now, it will soon become tomorrow, and tomorrow will become the next day. I am serious about this. I am certain I have a future in Paris.

So...

Mon nom est Billy. J'apprends à parler la français.

In addition to that, the creation of my little Billy Sheahan Photography ad banner this week and a lengthy conversation with Jillian Ann last night, has motivated me to really get going on redesigning my website. Oh I was so close to having a site I could easily update on a regular basis with this last version. The one that is currently up is version 7 if you can believe it. I've had a photography web presence since it was still cool to host your site on AOL way back in the mid 90s. You can still amazingly see the AOL pointer page, Billy Sheahan Photography has moved to www.billysheahan.com, when I finally got my own domain name back in 1997. Not sure why AOL has left it up for eight years, but it's sort of nostalgic to see it there.

In fact, one of the coolest hidden gems of the internet is this thing called the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. It has been quietly archiving the internet for at least a decade. billysheahan.com has a reference as early as 1996, but an actual website archive didn't begin of my site until 1998. But it's there, I guess as proof that I was pretty out in front of the curve on this information superhighway thing. You can even see me dissing AOL's built-in browser in small legal type at the bottom of one of the earlier pages. Never afraid to speak my mind I guess. There's even a link to a website stats company at the bottom I was using to track hits to my site. After a year of taking my money for the service, they informed me that content on my site was objectionable and they were terminating our relationship. The company was based in Utah. Not surprising.

But back to my point, The Internet Wayback Machine is great fun to see what veteran sites like Yahoo! used to look like when they were only a search engine back in 1996. Ah the good ol' days.

So the new billysheahan.com website. I'm tempted to put it up in pieces as a work in progress, but I know if I do that, it will be tempting to leave it unfinished if things get busy. The Thanksgiving holiday could give me four uninterrupted days of work on it, aside from a dinner with my family, so it's possible. However, I am waiting for Apple to release a new piece of software called Aperture, that may both help keep my photography catalog organized as well as assist me in producing more attractive web galleries more easily than I have in the past. Sadly, it looks like it won't be out until after Thanksgiving, which might force me to put off creating the new galleries, which is arguably the most important part of the website.

Jillian correctly reminded me last night that I have a tremendous amount of new work from the past year or two that has barely been seen outside of an occasional blog entry - and that it's some of my best work. If I'm going to really present myself with the proper due, the new work needs to get up there sooner and on a much more regular basis. She did tell me one of our images is the one she's using on her business cards. Considering how many incredible photographers she's worked with over the years, I am humbled by the compliment.

So do I create a new site with galleries that I may re-work in a few weeks or so? Well, the process of collecting the images, retouching them and putting copyright watermarks on them has to be done regardless, so maybe the most time consuming part of creating the web galleries has less to do with the website coding and more to do with image preparation. There, I've talked myself into it. I'll go ahead and begin creating the galleries and then re-create them when Aperture arrives.

In the meantime, here's a bit of a preview of what the home page may look like.

An Ad For Billy

So much to say. I'm quite excited about a half a dozen things going on right now. However writing about them is going to have to wait because I've been feverishly working on a few photography projects, and I'm exhuasted. But I did want to try out a new web banner I've been experimenting with. I'm wondering if it's a case of "too many notes, Mozart." Any thoughts out there? I've actually purchased some advertising and it feels odd to be the client this time.

Welcome Home

At the risk of being ridiculously prolific this weekend, here is yet another blog entry. I've spent so much time making my new space the photography studio I always dreamed of that making it my home as well had, until this weekend, been put on the back burner.

I've spent the past month or so collecting frames that I intended to display my photography in here. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to hang work without losing valuable shooting space. I frequently use all the walls here as backgrounds. Some are brick, cement, drywall in various colors, cement support columns, heavy luxurious drapes and huge floor to ceiling windows. All of these are my backdrops besides the usual black and white sweeps that I also have available to me.

I've been here six months and in that time I haven't put a single framed photograph on the wall, because I didn't want to lose any of my precious shooting space. But this weekend, I realized that I hadn't really moved in yet. I hadn't really made the space my own until I decorated it with my own artwork. And so this weekend, I went through all of the frames I had purchased and hung them all. Now the interesting thing to note and something that is very "Billy" of me is that they don't have any images in them yet. I just wanted to find the right walls for the right sizes and shapes of frames. Maybe a grouping of two would go well here. Maybe a row of five here. Maybe a single one on this wall.

You see, and I'm admittedly bragging here (he said with a big smile), that when you have a photography catalog with as many images as I do, you actually can pick the groupings and fill them in with photographs later. In other words if I create a grouping of two or three images, I most certainly can find two or three images that will go together and fit the mood of the room or wall because I simply have so many. It didn't happen overnight. Some of these images are 15 years old, but they still work in this contemporary setting. Maybe it's because I always wanted my work to be timeless. So even the images from the 90s don't look like they're from the 90s. They could be from any time in the history of photography.

So I'm in the process tonight of deciding which 40 images of the 35,000 I will print to use in the 40 frames that are hanging on my wall. It already feels good, even without the images in them. Now it feels like home. Now it feels like it's my personal space because I can imagine the art on the walls. I can see it. It's mine.

And maybe I'll print the 40 images and in a few months decide to change them out. So I'm not putting myself under pressure to find the best 40 images or the ones that I think will represent my entire body of work. I'm just picking the ones that seem to move me at the moment. It's fun that way, and I think this should be fun.

This weekend I also reserved my iGo car, and if you haven't heard of iGo, you should really check out the idea of neighborhood car sharing here. I went out to IKEA, on a Saturday no less, and picked up a pair of enormous framed mirrors. The are as tall as me and they are quite striking leaning up against the walls here. I also bought a huge area rug for my bedroom which has been neglected from a decor standpoint until now. I've even hung some beautiful leather masks above my bed that I purchased a few years ago from an artist in New Orleans. They are really striking and they add yet another layer of decor to my boudoir!

It finally feels warm here. It is a beautiful space to work and create in, but now it also feels like home. Everywhere I look there will be images of places I've been and people I've photographed. It will be a bit of a gallery in here, but I think that's sort of what I intended in the first place. An inspirational place to create and reflect on what I have already created.

Welcome home Billy!

Don't force the Force

I am so in the mood to write today. I also have a lot of things I’m in the mood to accomplish. However, I think getting in a little writing in will scratch that itch and help me focus on the rest of the day.

It’s been a week since Melissa and I devoted a whole day that was supposed to be for art instead to mental maintenance. I do still feel some regret at not creating with her that day, but I think it may not have been possible considering where my head was at the time. Talking was good. Perhaps taking that time, no matter how rare and valuable it is with her, was truly what I needed. As I said previously, she had some things on her mind as well, but my recollection was that the day was more about my confusion than hers and I’m grateful she gave me the time I seemed to have needed.

On Monday morning, I left for the day after waking her and making her an espresso and she got ready to meet a friend of hers before her afternoon flight back home. When I arrived back that evening I could still feel her there. Her energy is quite powerful and like a sweet perfume, it lingers long after her departure.

I had the feeling she would leave something behind for me. She almost always does. And sure enough, near my keyboard was a page ripped from the oversized W magazine. It was from an editorial fashion spread and while I don’t know what the other half of the photograph was, the page she chose was a simple closeup of some flowers. On that she wrote:

Billy,

In all this World
We try to hide
And force our hearts
to Live a silent cry.

Remember Truth is the
Strongest Voice
For it will carry you
to your greatest Joys.

She signed it and reminded me not to forget to smile. It’s on my wall and I have spent a week reading it every day. Her worlds can be interpreted to apply to many things currently going on in my life, and some days their meaning seems more specific than others.

One of her mantras is “Don’t force the Force.” She’s right. It does no good to try to manipulate things we have no control over. I’ve been finding peace in the last few years by realizing that time is not something that needs to be beaten.
It is a friend, not a deadline. I don’t mean it’s good to be lazy, but that most of our fears, frustrations and insecurities can be minimized by simply relaxing our grip on them, giving what we feel we need some time and space to happen and realizing what we have control over and what we don’t. Be it love or something else entirely. We may not get what we are hoping for, but life is a journey and to truly live it, the pain is just as important as the bliss.

The photograph above is one I made of Melissa during one of our earlier shoots. This is the original negative. No photoshop tricks or anything like that. It’s a flash and then I left the shutter open for an extra bit of time to get the triple-exposure-like effect. I guess it’s sort of like my comment above about after she’s gone she’s still there. This image was one of my monthly postcards (remember those!!??) a few years ago and I remember a friend of mine telling me her three year old son was just enamored by it. When the month was over and it was replaced on the refrigerator by the next month’s photograph, he asked her, “Where is the blue lady?” He wanted to see her again. Melissa has that effect on people. I’m fortunate to have her as a friend.

Paris is Learning

But then again, aren’t we all. The city I hope to call home in the not too distant future is coming to terms with social imbalances brought on by good intentions. I have been trying to be an unusual American. One that actually knows the subtleties of what is going on in the world east of New York and west of Los Angeles.

The BBC is an excellent English language resource. CNN and MSNBC... mmmm... not so much. They’re too busy spending 24 hours a day on the latest sensational story, or missing white woman. Fox? You’re joking, right?

The amazing thing is that it took eight days of Paris’ suburbs burning before the US media even noticed. I think it was on day eight that I finally saw something about it on one of the CNN or MSNBC websites.

The interesting thing though is that even the Parisian press has been covering the story, at least at the beginning as simply a political struggle. It wasn’t until the other European papers noticed that LeMonde and the other French newspapers of record were not talking about the root of the problem that the coverage really did get a little more introspective.

The story isn’t really about rioting caused by two Muslim youths dying while being chased by police. That’s sort of the tip of the iceberg from what I can gather. The trouble is indeed born from good intentions.

You see, France has one of the most generous employee benefits programs as well as pro-worker hiring and firing practices in the western world. Comparatively short work weeks, excellent health care and generous unemployment compensation. In addition to that, once you’re been offered employment there, it’s actually quite difficult to lose your job. As a result French companies are hesitant to take on too many employees for fear that if they do, it will be difficult to lay them off if the economy takes a downturn.

So what does this have to do with hundreds of cars being burned every night? Well, since it is so difficult to lay someone off, French employers are contributing to the high unemployment rates of around 40% in the poor suburban towns outside of Paris and Lyon and other major French cities. The kids, even though many of them are French citizens by birth, just can’t get jobs is how I understand it. The last two weeks have been thirty years in the making.

The lack of integration of Arab and African immigrants into mainstream French culture has resulted in very deeply resentful suburban ghettos. As I say this, I do fully realize that I am sitting in Chicago, one of the most segregated cities in the United States, even in 2005, so I’m not pointing a single finger toward France. No there are plenty of places to point at in this world of ours.

Perhaps it’s because Morgan and I just rediscovered our respective lives in Paris that it really saddens me to see the unrest. Paris gave us so much in just a few days that it feels very helpless to sit over here and watch the rioting spreading to so many towns. It seems like Paris proper has been spared any unpleasantness up to now, but today I read a report that the violence had indeed popped up in Le Marais, one of the artist neighborhoods in the heart of Paris.

The police presence has been increased around all of the major monuments and important Parisian places including the Eiffel Tower. I wonder how the calming effect of the Parisian lifestyle we experienced there has been replaced with, if you’ll pardon the comparison, an American sense of tension and fear. That would be a shame.

France, like all countries that strive to be good world citizens, needs to find a way to balance the inequities of the haves and the have nots. As a very naive and recent student of Paris and French culture, I certainly don’t have the answers. I heard a news commentator today say that the rioting in France is their Katrina. Meaning their tragic event that has uncovered the truly unpleasant reality of how large countries treat their less fortunate just like Katrina did here.

I remember while waiting for Morgan to come down to the lobby of our hotel one morning, I glanced at Le Monde. There on the front page was the unfolding story of Hurricane Katrina. The French were, just as they were on 9/11, feeling our suffering. Too bad it took our news media eight days to notice theirs.

If you don’t want to wait to read or hear about the world until there is a lull in the American news cycle of whatever fluff they’re feeding us, try listening to The World on NPR, or pointing your browser at the BBC News website, or if you’re trying to learn French as I am, try Le Monde. You can also turn this French language paper into English, by entering that website into the AltaVista - Babel Fish Translation page, which does a pretty decent job of translating on the fly.

Paris, je vous souhaite la paix.


This photograph was taken as Morgan and I explored Jardin des Tuileries (The Tuileries Gardens) one beautiful overcast morning. The gardens are just to the west of the Louvre and separate it from Champs Elysees.

Billy Sheahan Photography - Now Official

There are some things that happen quietly in my life that are really a big deal. Tonight is one of them. Billy Sheahan Photography is now official. It's a registered business with the Federal government and the State of Illinois. I have tax numbers and federal identification numbers. Kind of boring stuff, but what it represents is pretty huge.

Way back in 1993 I went to Europe for the first time. I took a few hundred photographs. Much to my surprise, when I began showing them to people, they wanted to by them. One evening I moved all the furniture from my little apartment living room into my bedroom and created a space large enough to have a little gallery. I think I charged $40 a photo back then. But I sold enough of them to recoup half of my trip.

As the years passed, I continued to travel, making photographs wherever I went. I rented out spaces to have shows. Eventually I was invited to show at a few Chicago galleries and art shows. I never made enough money to quit my day job, but I kept at it. Sometimes I would make a few dozen sales a year, sometimes not much of anything.

During those early years I donated photographs or I offered portrait sessions to be auctioned off to support various theater companies or charities I believed in and wanted to support. It was at one of those auctions that I first heard the words, "Oh, and this is the photographer, Billy Sheahan." It was an electric moment for me.

Up until that time I spent most of my professional career climbing the ladder of broadcast news journalism, both radio and television, and more recently I was beginning my career as a film editor. None of the titles that I had during that period meant as much to me as hearing those words, "This is the photographer." I'm not sure why it meant so much to me, but it did. I was actually being introduced as an artist. A huge moment in my life.

This was the image that I offered up for the auction. It was the fist time I had displayed any of my work in public. The auction was to help support a theater group called The Cypress Group. One of the group's actors, Shawn Simon would turn out to be one of my earliest models and she really helped me to evolve into the photographer I was to become. I'm not sure why I chose that photograph to auction off. I think the tree in the background might be a cypress tree and I guess it seemed appropriate, but it probably had some other meaning in my head as well.


It's an image of a road from the lost city of Pompei, Italy which I had the extreme pleasure of exploring one rainy afternoon. I think you can see a point of view beginning to be expressed even in this early image. I do seem to make a lot of images of doors and stairs and paths. I think this image of a road was appropriate to where my head was in my beginning stages as a photographer. I'm sure the short distance down the road to what looks to be a reward of the remains of a building of some sort under the large shelter of a tree probably did represent how close I felt I would be to realizing my dream of being a photographer. I had no idea of the actual distances I would cover both physically and emotionally in the coming years to get to where I am now.

But here I am.

Billy Sheahan Photography.

After years of ignoring the necessities of organization and taking my art as seriously as others around me clearly were. Today, I have taken a major step toward the next chapter of my life. I guess in reality, it's just forms and government numbers, but when I was speaking with the surprisingly kind and helpful woman at the IRS tonight, my dreams seemed a lot more real. I officially named my business. It's a name I've been using for years, but now somehow it was as if I was suddenly taking myself more seriously.

I have a lot of work in front of me now. Big plans. Goals. The cataloging of negatives continues. Four thousand photographs down, only 31,000 more to go. And I seem to be taking another thousand or so a month, probably more, so I'm not getting any closer to being caught up. But that's good. It feels like living. Creating.

There will be exhibitions of my work. Soon here in Chicago, then New York and Paris. I will publish several books in the coming years as well. I will continue my foray into fashion and art with my new muse. I will make photographs that will feed my being. I will be inspired by what is around me.

"Oh, and this is the photographer, Billy Sheahan." Tonight I raise my glass.... to me!

A Canceled Shoot

Well it's been an interesting few days. I used to be a guy who had a season pass on my emotional roller coaster. It's taken years of conscious effort to learn to appreciate the middle ground and not spend all my time at the top or the bottom. But lately it does seem like the highs have been very high and the lows have been very low.

This weekend, my wonderful friend Melissa was in town staying with me to have a shoot we had been planning for months. We had a specific look in mind and we were both very excited. Melissa always shows up with ideas and enough energy to light up a city. Some of my favorite photographs I've ever made have been of her. We had an idea that was inspired by her Native American ancestry. Like most of us in this country, she's a bit of a mutt, but her diverse heritage is the reason for her unique beauty. But we really wanted to focus on her Apache roots for this shoot.

We'd been looking at some of director Mark Romanek's lush music videos from a few years back as guides for the look of the film and had really filled in a lot of the details of the shoot weeks ago. I think it's a little unusual to have such a clear idea of what we want to do going into a shoot. Most of the time I like to have a general idea of the direction we want to go, but leave room for inspiration on the set as we get into it.

So Sunday morning. The day of the shoot.

I woke up at 8, quietly gave my new beautiful muse across town a wake-up call so as not to disturb Melissa, and we talked for a bit as we often do, but my head was in a strange place and I decided I wasn't quite ready to get moving yet. But by the time I did get up a few hours later, my head felt like it was even more underwater. I walked out of my bedroom and Melissa was already up and flipping through one of my fashion magazines. She saw the look on my face and knew something wasn't right with me. I started to talk and words just started coming out, and coming out... and coming out. In a matter of a few minutes we both knew there wouldn't be any shooting happening.

I've been doing my best to stay in my "Paris state of mind" since Morgan and I got back from our life changing trip back in September. But it does seem like I've the weight of a few different worlds on my shoulders lately. Or maybe more specifically the thoughts in my own head are heavier and need more attention than I've been ready to admit to myself. I'm still generating positive energy in my life. I'm making an attempt to keep positive people around me these days. There are enough negative pressures out there and people who want to fill my already full plate to the point of overflowing. So I'm doing my best. I'm just sad that the weight of it all got to the point to me yesterday that I had to cancel a shoot. And one with one of my favorite models that I only get to work with once or twice a year. I think the realization of a missed opportunity to be creative will begin to smart as the week progresses.

But Melissa was a good listener and it turns out had a few things that were percolating in her head as well. I think she needed to say the words out loud about things in her life. So we talked and cried and listened to music that moved us and went for a couple of long walks. I think we were still keeping the option of shooting open later in the day, but it was clear that as night descended on the day that I was just emotionally exhausted. And I think when I reach that point as much as I want to make something beautiful, I just don't have it in me. Or at least I didn't last night.

Melissa listened and by the end of the night pretty much told me what I was afraid of hearing about myself and that was that. We went to bed and for once I got 8 hours of sleep. Sleep I probably desperately needed.

Today, I can't say that I feel better necessarily, but at least I'm not as drained. Plus taking one day off of my life is difficult enough, even though I deserved it and it probably did wonders for my head in the long run. Time to get back to living.

Une table pour une, s'il vous plaît

One of the things I love about my new place... wait... when am I going to stop calling it my new place? I've been here six months. Is it still new? Well perhaps until I really get all the bookshelves organized and everything put away - yes, there are still things not quite put away yet - perhaps until then, it's still a bit on the new side.

But I digress...

One of the things I love about my new place is dinner time. I have a wonderful big kitchen to prepare my meals in. I have room for all my pots and pans and plenty of counter space to work on. It's been quite a pleasant change from my old overcrowded space. In that space I used to eat sitting on the sofa using a coffee table as my dinner table. The food was questionable and the atmosphere was... well it was questionable as well.

But now, when I sit down for dinner it's quite different. First, I actually set my table. Silverware, cloth napkins, candles and place settings. But Billy, you might be saying to yourself, it's just you, why go through all the trouble? A fair question. One I used to ask myself until about six months ago.

The answer is simple. If I had a good friend over for dinner, how would I prepare dinner for them? Well, I guess I would go to the store and buy fresh vegetables and other healthy things. I would prepare a nice meal for them in my kitchen and set a beautiful table with everything I mentioned above. Especially the candles. Food never looks better than in candlelight. And we would enjoy a great meal and think and talk and feel good about what we were eating and enjoy the moment. And we would finish off the meal with espressos.

And if I would go to all that trouble for a friend, why wouldn't I go through all that trouble for myself as well? I care about myself as much as any friend I would have over for dinner, so why not treat myself with the same kindness? Why not indeed. Of course the conversation is not as lively at "une table pour une," but it does give me a moment to digest all the thoughts running through my head all day.

And just as I wouldn't have the television on if I were having dinner with a friend, I don't have it on during my meals either. Then the meal becomes background noise, and good food is too important to relegate to the background. Plus, as I just mentioned, meals are a time to communicate and share, even if it's with myself.

I know this is sort of a strange blog entry, but I've been meaning to write about this for some time now. I try to start and end the day with some time for myself these days. It seems like a small thing to give yourself a half an hour at both ends of the day to just be quiet and listen to myself, but I think it is a healthy thing to do. There are always so many people and projects demanding of piece of Billy pie that I find that if I'm not careful, there is none left for myself.
So by beginning and ending the day with some time that I'm not working or cleaning or working on the never ending to-do list, is a way to give myself a little respect. If I happen to arrive at my first destination a few minutes late, I let myself get away with that. It would be easy to say, oh I'm running late, I'd better skip my morning relaxing or whatever I'm in the mood for, but I think when I skip my time like that, I'm pretty much invalidated myself for the whole day. Bad way to start I think.

So speaking of tables for dinner, one of my favorite things about traveling is experiencing long leisurely meals in cities where English is not the native language. Europeans really know how to celebrate life at the dinner table. I've tried to incorporate some of that back at my table. Perhaps that's why I find myself taking lots of photographs of tables when I'm abroad. Sometimes they're set for dinner, sometimes not. I think I think of tables the same way I think of doors and stairways when I'm photographing them. Like doors and stairs, a table setting is full of exciting possibilities and unknowns. What will the conversation be like? What new tastes will we experience? What new words will we learn by trying to order in the language of our host country? Will we meet new people at the table next to us? What will we discover about ourselves during the meal?

If you've never experienced a meal like that, I would suggest to you that you never really let yourself go properly at a meal. And I don't mean let yourself go like you ordered everything on the menu. I mean did you really observe your surroundings, and tried to blend in with your fellow dinners? Did you try something you've never had before, or something you couldn't pronounce? Did you ask your server what they liked on the menu? Did you spend two or three hours at the table, slowly enjoying everything around you? Did you close the restaurant? Were you open to just living in the moment for the evening?

Here are three photographs of some of those exciting possibilities tables. The first back up there a bit is in Bologna. I was traveling through Italy mostly on my own, basing myself out of Milano with my friend Tonia who was kind enough to let me stay with her. I would take trains all over northern Italy and return to Milano in a few days before setting off in another direction. A great way to explore.


Bologna was an amazing city. It's home to what I believe is the first University. And it seems like in the center of the city, pretty much every walkway is covered with beautiful archways supported by silent and patient massive columns. I had a small midday meal here and imagined all of the people who had walked past this spot in the hundreds of years that the building and the columns had been standing here.

The second table was in Montreal Canada. I mentioned in a recent blog that I was up there on the set of a television commercial for Tresemme shampoo that I was the film editor on and Montreal was being used as a Parisian location. The tables were set up around a beautiful fountain and the brown wooden chairs just popped in the sunlight. I'm not sure if the tables were there because the square was set up by the production company or whether we borrowed an outdoor café to shoot that part of the commercial, but I was sure that it was a beautiful setting. I only make one photograph of the tables and this was it.


Montreal was a great city. Old and beautiful and... well... European. I had a few great meals there and I even got to take one of the models out for her 21st birthday. Sara Dawson was one of the models we worked with on the two day shoot and she was very pleasant. It turned out she turned 21 on the night of the wrap party and somehow... I'm still not sure how exactly... she and I ended up outlasting everyone else on the production and I had the pleasure of introducing her to her first legal martinis. The details are a bit sketchy, but there was a lot of laughing and quite a few martinis. I think we walked back to the hotel after dancing and closing the bar even though I really didn't know my way around Montreal and I took her back to her room about 3am. I'm pretty sure my flight back to the States was a 5am flight, so there really wasn't any point in sleeping. I got a lot of curious looks from everyone from the production at the airport the next day, but I'll never tell. Here's Sara on her Vespa looking Tresemme fabulous on her birthday and returning with her basket of flowers and a baguette. You can see her in motion as well as Basia and a glimpse of the tables by watching the commercial here.

And the last photograph of tables I took in Mykonos Greece. I was having a bit of a creative block in Greece, and so I just put away my camera for a few days and didn't worry about it. Sure enough, after about three days I got my eye back and I'll never forget the evening I started to get inspired again.
I went back to the villa, grabbed my camera bag and headed back along the shoreline as the sun was beginning to set in the late afternoon and the restaurants were beginning to set up for the evening. This particular one, I didn't end up eating at, but I couldn't resist the colors and repeating patterns against the rocks at what had to be one of the most spectacular views over the rocks into the Aegean Sea, just a few feet away. Beautiful.

Tables are full of possibilities. Be sure to take yours seriously when you sit down to eat. You deserve it.