The Week Between

Jillian's in town for a few days to create wonderful things with me. Four days ago, I played Santa to about 10 kids I didn't know. Yes, with the red suit and the beard and the wig and hat and the ho ho ho. More on that another time. Morgan's home again. Yea! Still preparing for the February gallery show at Echo. Still redesigning the web site. Almost there on that one. Can't wait to make it live!

Yesterday Jillian and I shot a nice set of her in a little pink sweater and black furry boots. Even though I've been shooting in this space since May, I enjoy coming up with corners and walls and changing up areas to make each session not feel like they were all shot here. I think I managed to find another one yesterday.

And, at the risk of this entry getting a little nerdy, it was also the last shoot with my first digital camera, my Nikon D100. I knew the day I bought it, it would not be with me the rest of my life the way my Hasselblad and my Nikon F3 film cameras will be. The technology was just getting going and shortcuts were taken in order to keep the price in this solar system. And even though the camera served me fairly well and I made some absolutely stunning images with it, those shortcuts were starting to show up in some of the more detail oriented fashion work that I was doing.

So after much internal debate, I not only bought a new digital camera, but I also switched teams. I've been a serious Nikon shooter for almost 15 years. I love the lenses I've acquired over the years. I love that those cameras have been all over the world with me. But on the digital side, Nikon has been falling behind Canon. I patently watched the past few years, hoping that the leapfrog game that Nikon and Canon often play with each other would eventually give Nikon the advantage, but I just got tired of waiting.

So a few months shy of three years with the D100, it is being retired. A shame really since just yesterday I used my 1969 vintage Hasselblad 500C to shoot Jillian. It's almost 40 years old and takes the most beautiful images. It is a perfect example of simple brilliant design that is as valid today as when NASA started taking those cameras to the moon the same year mine was crafted.

Same with my Nikon F3. Younger in that it was born in 1983, but still takes the most amazing images. It was the last Nikon that I would call a fully manual camera. No auto focus, and just a rudimentary light meter. But it's never failed me. Something I can't say for some of the other more electronic, computer-driven cameras I've owned over the years. I've had the opportunity to upgrade my 35mm film cameras quite often in the last few years, but I keep coming back to the solid reliability of the F3. It was with that camera that I really learned how to be a photographer. It's a trusted friend I'll have forever.


Which brings me back to the new kid on the block. The Canon D5. Switching to Canon I would liken to a baseball player switching to football in that all my tools are suddenly unusable. The Nikon lenses, batteries, chargers, adapters, extenders, all had to be replaced with Canon. So it was no small decision. In a few hours I'll have a better idea of the leap I've made here, but after coming home last night after dinner with Jillian and pouring over the new manual while she worked on her website, I feel like the shortcuts that have been hounding me with the D100 will be distant memories. The camera feels good in my hands and even though it will be a little distracting trying to make art with an untested and unfamiliar tool today, I feel very good about it. I feel like I've been cramming all night for a major test. I hope I remember all the answers.

But when it comes to making beautiful images, if I can just remember to turn my brain off and shoot with my heart, I should be just fine! The photographs you see here are some of the last D100 images. Not a bad way to go out before getting fired. Sorry D100. I enjoyed the ride, but I've outgrown you now. Happy New Years Eve Eve Eve!

Fashionably Fabulous 2005

I can tell I've mentally managed to put the crush of the holidays behind me - finally - on a cold gloomy December 25in Chicago, because I'm in the mood to write. I have one more party to attend tonight at my long time friend Chris' beautiful home in the South Loop. But unlike the recent racing, shopping, wrapping and running, this will be a nice calm evening. A silent night, if you will.

Chris invites me over every year and more often than not, I don't make it. Probably because I'm so holiday-ed out by the time Christmas evening gets here, all I can do is hunker down and attack one of my many projects that seldom see a full free day to be accomplished. This year, even though I have mountains of creative work I can't wait to get started or continue on, I'm going to take a few hours out and enjoy time with my friend and his family.

I first met Chris in his room at the now shuttered Plaza Hotel in New York one early September morning more than 10 years ago. I think he handed me a bagel and a coffee as he introduced himself, moments before we were to start a nine day adventure photographing and filming Elite Modeling's Look of the Year Modeling Contest. It was my first trip to NY and it would turn out to be one of the most amazing experiences in my life. We basically followed around young modeling hopefuls as they were herded, critiqued, photographed, interviewed, coiffed, styled, dressed and paraded at various locations and studios in Manhattan and Brooklyn. I was too naive at the time to appreciate what I was experiencing, but I knew it was pretty cool.

Since then, Chris and I have shared quite a few life moments, both wonderful and awful. We've traveled on shoots all over North America and definitely led the good life on many of those. Perhaps that's why I'm looking forward to tonight. These days it's hard to find time to get together and when an opportunity like this presents itself, I've learned not to take it for granted.

If there is one thing 2005 has taught me, it's not to take life for granted. This year will be the one that I experienced more wonderful people, places and things than I think I ever have in my life. So often at the end of the year when I look back and what I wanted to accomplish compared to what I actually achieved, well, there is usually a fairly large deficit.

Not this year. I had big plans for 2005 at this time last year, but never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined where I would be sitting today. It's been nothing short of incredible.

Even before the clocked chimed midnight on January first 2005, my great friend Ryan pretty much ordered me to find a new place to live. I had been living and shooting in a small one bedroom apartment for the last 10 years or so, managing to make amazing images there by turning over nearly all the living space to a studio and working space. Models would come in and couldn't believe I actually lived there. But we made great art. Still it was way past time to move on and so Ryan's little poke at me to finally make the leap to a proper photography space was well received.

In the spring, I began heading out with a wonderful and newly minted realtor named Cara Mamott (and really, if you ever need help finding a place to buy in Chicago, let me know - she's amazing!) on the weekends and after work to find my dream space. She quickly caught on that what I was looking for was a little unusual. The studio needs would guide the purchase and soon, we would walk into a space and she would immediately turn to me and say, "Okay, where would the cyc go in here? On that wall?" For those of you who don't know, the word cyc (pronounced sike) is short for cyclorama, which is a large floor to ceiling background that curves out from the wall where it meets the floor and extends out into the room, creating a limbo-like space since there are no discernible seams to give you any perspective. On my birthday on April 29th, I closed on a beautiful loft space on the near west side of Chicago in the warehouse district, a neighborhood I've always loved and felt comfortable in. I love my home and working space. Every day when I wake up, I can't believe I'm here. This place is a dream come true for me. So many different kinds of shooting spaces, brick, cement, hardwood floors, curved walls, floor to ceiling windows providing beautiful light. So many areas to be discovered.

My move to a new space was so healthy on so many levels. I sit here today, a much smaller man I was at this time last year. I've cut so many new holes in my belts. My clothes are literally falling off of me. Time to get new ones. I still have a long way to go, but progress is being made every day, one day at a time.

Those two things would make for a great year, but there was so much more to come. My friend Jillian Ann who I first photographed a week after 9/11 continued to allow me to fly her in from NY more frequently this year when we discovered that by giving ourselves a few days to continuously work instead of a four hour block here and there, we were able to create the most breathtaking images either of us had ever been a part of. Jillian has always been a remarkable subject for me these past few years. A true collaborator in expressing what we are feeling during a shoot. She has given me what few have, that being an enthusiastic participant in creating whatever art I feel the need to make. She has continually allowed me to use her breathtaking canvas to express what I find beautiful in women, exploring the mystery of women and why they intrigue me so. With her I've been allowed to explore imagery and subject matter that has been joyful, erotic, inspiring, sexual, thought provoking, lyrical, bewitching, elegant... all of the things I imagine when I think of women I hold in awe.

In addition to all of those ideas, we began to take the leap into an area that I always wanted to try but never felt quite qualified to explore. To say I underestimated what I thought I could do with fashion photography would be quite the understatement. Jillian began using her network of designers to help us borrow some amazing designs to shoot in. The results blew me away. It was like discovering I could somehow fly. A whole new level to my work. Fashion. Who would have thought?

Jillian will be back in a few days to inspire and create and I'm sure we'll close out 2005 with more gorgeous images that represent how I feel about her and women in general. That's part of the fun with her. I don't know exactly what we'll create. I just know it will be stunning.

My friend Melissa, also known as "Cemetery Melissa" to many of my friends because of our breathtaking shoot a few years ago in the Graceland Cemetery, has been in a few times this year from her travels around the world. She too has become a trusted artistic ally and life Sherpa. She will always have the distinction of being both the last subject in my old place as well as my first subject in my new space. We created more beautiful images this year and I will always be grateful for her fearless generosity with her beauty. Ready to try anything, and never showing up empty handed as far as ideas go. She'll be visiting again next month and I'm already excited about shooting some ideas we've been talking about for months.

But as Melissa has shown me, life is about getting out of your space, no matter how fabulous and experiencing the world. Ryan and I finally made plans to go to Las Vegas to see two Cirque du Soliel shows we had been talking about seeing for more than a year. I was really looking forward to spending some great one on one time with her since we had become such close friends in the past few years. So when she asked if we could bring her sister Morgan along and make it a sort of happy birthday trip for her, my first internal reaction was a bit of a wince. I barely knew Morgan and sometimes two is company and all that.

And I'm not really a huge fan of Las Vegas. I can only take a few days there at a time when I need to get back to something a little more real. But Ryan and I had made an art out of evenings of drinking Cosmopolitans and I knew no matter what Vegas would present to us, we'd make it a riot. But bringing Morgan seemed important to her and so I reluctantly said yes. As I sit here today, I cringe at the idea that I might have said no and missed out on getting to know someone who would become one of the most important people in my life.

So to put it mildly, the three of us had a great time in Vegas. We had a very unconventional time there. Of course, we saw the Cirque shows, O and Zumanity, which words cannot describe. Brilliant, awe inspiring, emotional. Not enough to explain what we saw. But beyond that, we explored the various vintage and second hand shops that are not on the tour guide handbook and played dress up and had impromptu photoshoots up and down the strip, in bars, elevators, hallways, wherever the mood struck us. I can't tell you how many times we were stopped and asked, "What show are you with?" Even at Zumanity, people were paying as much attention to us as the various costumed performers.

Just before we left for Vegas, I was talking to Morgan about my plan to take a trip to Paris in a month. I still hadn't decided whether I was going to go for sure, and Morgan said something like she had never been out of the country and how cool it would be to go somewhere like that. Before I could think twice, I told her that when I traveled, because of my size and my hatred of tiny cramped airline seats, I usually flew poor man's first class, by purchasing two seats to assure me a little room to stretch out. I asked her if she wanted to take 3/4 of my second seat. As the words were coming out of my mouth, I realized I was just about to go to Vegas with her and wasn't sure how we would all get along for the week in Vegas. Perhaps if things got ugly, an invitation to Paris would have been premature.

We didn't discuss it again until a few days after we got back when I got a text message from her in the middle of the night saying she had thought it over, and even though she would miss her first week back at school if she went with me, she couldn't pass up the opportunity. I was so excited because we had really hit it off in Vegas with Ryan and we did travel very well together.

To make a long story short and one that I have discussed quite a bit in previous entries, that trip with Morgan to Paris changed my life. It changed both of our lives in ways I'm sure won't be fully realized for a few years. Morgan is an extraordinary person. Rare. Beautiful. Intelligent. To travel with her to such an inspiring city such as Paris was one of the greatest experiences I know I will ever have. We learned as much french as we could before we landed at Charles de Gaulle and did very well there, as we liked to describe it, not visiting Paris, so much as living there for a week.

We both were reminded of what was important to us in our lives. Reminded how full life can be if you really truly make the decision to live it. By the time we got back, Paris had made an indelible mark on both of us. One that will change the paths we take for the rest of our lives.

I just completed my first French language class at Alliance Française Chicago. I got a 97% on my first final. Je parle français! It will take me about two years to become fluent, but I'm on my way.

Morgan.

During the course of a lifetime many people enter your life. Some come and go and some come and stay. Morgan is one that I hope will stay for many years to come. She has touched my life in so many astonishing ways. I may have more life experience than her at this point, but I don't think it will be that way for long. She continues to teach me things, and helps me to overcome fears I still have. When I try to tell her how beautiful I think she is, she inevitably reminds me of how beautiful I am. Meeting her is the single greatest gift I could have received this year.

A few weeks after we got back from Paris, we were out having dinner and she told me she had decided some things about her life. One of them was that she decided that she wanted to try modeling. She had recently met Jillian and seeing us work together and seeing how real it was had made something click in her head. Morgan asked me if I would help her get started. It was one of the happiest things I could have heard. I'd been wanting to photograph Morgan for some time, and had asked her about it once, before we even went to Vegas but she wasn't interested.

So yes, a few of you have figured out that some of my mysterious postings about my new muse have been, in fact, about Morgan. Maybe a lot of you have. I'm sometimes not at stealthy as I think I am. But after our Paris experience and learning what an extraordinary person she is, she has inspired my photography on a new level. We are continuing to take our first steps together as photographer and muse with wonderful results. And even though we're still not ready to completely uncover what we've been up to, I've gotten permission to post a little peak of what is to come.


We've discovered a beautiful boutique here in Chicago called G'bani. One of the proprietors is a fashionably alive woman called Trevian Kutti. We've been welcomed into her store on several occasions now with champagne and a new tequila liqueur called Agavero. The ultimate way to shop for Italian Couture. Morgan and I have spent many hours both looking in the windows on our walks home from fabulous dinners as well as inside trying on and purchasing some of the beautiful designs.

Here's one of the images from one of our shoot this month. The dress is Patrizia Pepe Firenze and the shoes are Guiseppe Zanotti. The legs are Morgan. You'll get to see more of her in the near future.

Je t'aime Morgan! Au Revoir 2005!

Gift Fatigue

At the risk of sounding like a complete scrooge, this has really been a brutal month leading up to December 25th. Let me rephrase that. Even though so many wonderful things are going on in my life right now, sometimes it's hard to remember how good I have it during the crush... and I do mean crush... of holiday expectations and schedules.

I'm pretty good at deadlines. Sometimes I finish in the nick of time, but I usually get done what needs to get done. I'm no stranger to, "it has to be done by Friday." But I think the holiday deadlines, which I think is a much more appropriate term for this month than anything else, are really frustrating to me. I was talking about it today. It seems like the people I really care about, the people who I would do anything for, get lost in the shuffle of misplaced priorities.

Here it is, three days before December 25th and even though I've given out something in the order of 60 gifts so far this year, I still have not finished the gift for my best friend, let alone finished buying for my mom and dad, my sister and her family and other people who mean the most to me. I'm glad I gifted the 60 people I did. It's a way to thank them for making my 2005 a very pleasant and prosperous year. But do I love them? Well, not like the handful of people I mentioned above.

I have gift fatigue.

And I think what frustrates me the most is that I really want to buy or make things for the people that mean the most to me. I'm just sad that they have become another deadline for me. It isn't about handing a gift to someone I care about on Christmas Eve or Christmas morning. It's about looking someone I love in the eye, getting a chance to be in the same room
with them and saying, "I love you." I don't want that moment to be an out of breath, barely wrapped, what was left on the sale table when I had to run in at the last minute on the way to whatever party or family gathering I'm racing to get to. They deserve better than that. I deserve better.

I've certainly received some wonderful and generous presents already this month and I'll probably be handed several more before Boxing Day arrives, but I think at this point in my life there is one thing that is more important than any object I might be handed, and that is the love of those I care about. Hearing the words, "I love you," would be the best thing this tired, stressed out, overwhelmed boy could ever receive for Christmas this year. It might be just the thing to make me stop, take a breath, look up from my to do list and let the holiday crush roll off my back. It might be just the thing to remind me what I know in my heart are the most important things in my life.

The people I care deeply about. The people that when I try to tell them what they mean to me, I can't find the words. The people who support and encourage and sometimes save me. The people who are so amazing they don't even know it. I would like my gift to them be the ability for them to see what I see in them. What makes them so special to me. Why I couldn't imagine a day on this planet without them. How lucky I am to know them. That's what I want to give, not a gift certificate.

Tonight I spent a quiet evening with Morgan. I really needed it. A bit of calm in a whirlwind of holiday insanity. A little perspective before I take one more deep breath and head out into it again tomorrow. Thanks Morgan. Boxing Day will be here before we know it.

Picking the Show

This will be even shorter than last night... it has to be. It's 1:30am and I have to be at the lab at 8:30am to pick up film from Saturday's shoot.

But before I get to the show...

French class was fun tonight. I got paired off with a woman called Caroline and we had to come up with a little skit that was supposed to take place at a café, two people meeting using as much french as we know. Questions and answers. To make a long story short we wanted to come up with a funny ending and so it ended with her telling me she was a proctologist and me turning and yelling, "check please!"

We totally cracked the professor up. It was great! And all in french I might add!

So I'm in the process of picking the show for Echo Gallery in February. This is always so hard for me to do. I haven't shown in public in five years. How do I narrow down the thousands of photographs I've created since then to about 20 that we'll pick the final show from? I'm not sure. I'm down to about 300 right now and I'm not even up to the images I've created this year.



I'm using a new program from Apple called Aperture to help cull down the volume of images. So far so good. It's amazing what I'm finding going through dozens of shoots with fresh eyes. It's an embarrassment of riches I'm happy to say!

Here's one of the undiscovered ones from tonight. Maybe it will make the cut, maybe not! That's a carefully applied mixture of flour and water covering her body to make it look like a marble statue.

Wish I Had More Time

This is going to be very brief. I have a silly amount of things that really need to get done and even though I haven't managed to carve a half and hour out to write a blog entry in a while... tonight isn't going to be that night either.

So in brief:
Photography is going extremely well. Shooting with my new muse on a regular basis again and it's my favorite thing to do these days. I promise we'll have images to show soon. We just want them to be right.

French. Wow. Being back in school has really spun my head around. I showed up for class the first day without a pen or paper, honestly, because it didn't occur to me to bring anything. I got better and I'm keeping up in class even though I could really use more time to do homework and review what we learn every day... did I mention the class meets every day??!! But I'm feeling good about what I'm learning.

I haven't been on the scale in about a month or so, but my clothes seem to be continuing to be looser. All that through the holiday season too. Not bad Billy. Walking, walking, walking. Even in that blizzard we had last week. Five miles today in the cold as well. I'm damn serious about this. Fruit and veggies, fruit and veggies... and a bit of meat here and there... mostly there on the meat though.

I wish I didn't have to sleep. Too much to do and just not enough time to do it. It's probably the only frustrating thing in my life right now. All I want to do and just not the time.

And on that note... gotta go. Thanks to everyone who's been reading and those who took the time to drop me a line. Believe me, I'm surprised at how many of you there are out there. Past and present people in my life. It humbles me.


Today's image is a favorite of mine from way back. I don't think I've ever posted it on my blog though. I call it Man with Umbrella in Pompeii. Not staged. I have no idea who the man is. I was exploring the historic ruins of Pompeii near Naples, Italy one very rainy afternoon when all of a sudden the rain stopped and the clouds broke. I managed to get off three pictures while he still had his umbrella up. One of those moments that only come a few times in your life.

La vie est belle

Je m'appelle Billy. Je suis photographe.

Sometimes my life is so good I'm embarrassed about it. Tonight is one of those nights. I'm just home from a night out with one of my most precious friends, Ryan. It's been a long time since we had several hours to spend together, just talking and enjoying each other's company. I have missed her. It was so wonderful to spend an evening with her eating delicious food, drinking flavorful cosmopolitans and rich French wine. It’s been too long. I love talking with her. Je t'aime Ryan.

Once again I am a student. I'm a little rusty I’ll admit. So rusty in fact that I arrived at my first day of class without a notebook or a pen. It's been a while. But I'm good at borrowing and I found someone willing to lend me a pen at La Alliance Français Mediatheque and I'm very good at writing in margins, so I managed my first class.

I'm taking the first steps to widening my horizons. I'm officially learning to speak French. Je parle a peu la Français. It's been both difficult and satisfying. It's been almost 20 years since I've been in a classroom and it's taken me about 24 hours to recover the concept of learning and homework. But I'm staying afloat and I'm very excited to be challenging my brain in this way. Just like the exercise I've been subjecting my physical body to, it's about time I worked my mind out as well.

Mon professeur est Erwan Sorel, a very patient man who has really brought fun to learning a new language. I both laugh a lot and furrow my brow. But it's so rewarding when the light turns on. He handed out a map of Paris tonight as one of our exercises and it was so wonderful to see those streets again. That familiar seashell shape of the most beautiful city I have ever visited..

J' habité à Paris à l'Hôtel de Suede à trente une Rue Vaneau.

It looks like I will be exhibiting my photography for the first time in five years at Echo Gallery some time in February. It's been too long. Five years in fact. I'm thrilled to be showing work that I've been creating for the last half decade that has never been shown in public before.

So yes, la vie est belle. Bonne nuit!