Dijon

Ok well, Morgan and I are now traveling first class on the TGV (Train a Grande Vitesse) in style. You simply can't compare traveling by train in the States with traveling in Europe. I love to take Amtrak across the US and I've done it many times, but in Europe and most certainly in France, train travel is so far superior. I can't be sure how fast we're traveling now, but I bet it's around 160 mph or more. These high speed trains have a gentle sway about them as we take turns. Actually very soothing,

Our comfortable seats are in "la Voiture Silence," which means the silent car. You have to turn your cell phones to vibrate. No one is talking. The trains here are so well engineered that it's whisper quiet in here. I'm actually have to typing more gently, so I don't make a disturbing racket. It feels like a library.... the fastest library in the world!

The trip from Paris to Dijon is only about an hour and 40 minutes, and I know Morgan and I are enjoying the idea of a holiday within our holiday. We have been trying to make these two weeks a nice comfortable blend of work and relaxation. I think we've done pretty well. I've shot about 2300 pictures with her so far. Combine that with the general snapshots and travel street photos and other art that we've both been taking and we're probably up over 3000 at this point.

We've brought a lot of couture with us and it's been great to go to the closet when it's time to shoot and select from a nice range of beautiful things. It's always a challenge to go out on location and work when there are a lot of people nearby. It's high tourist season here and they are everywhere. So we've been finding quiet little paths in la Jardin de Luxembourg and the small narrow streets around our apartment.

It's funny, Morgan has actually stopped traffic... literally... a few times here. The light turns green and the cars just sit there watching for 30 seconds or longer. No one honks. The Parisiens have become the tourists suddenly and they're taking in our sights!

But we've also been allowing ourselves to use the inside of the apartment as well to create without worrying about onlookers. We're on the third floor and at certain times of day, the sun comes in through the tiny elevator shaft creating beautiful light to shoot in. The elevator is relatively new and most people don't use the grand winding staircase anymore, but we've spent a lot of time on it, using it as another nice location. There's also a beautiful courtyard downstairs. And then there is our little balcony. Just enough room for two people and it's been yet another place for us to shoot.

Morgan has been great. It's not easy to be your own hair and makeup artist as well as
choosing how the clothes go together and then being the model. And when we're shooting outside, she's the one that people are looking at, not me. It's usually pretty good attention. Very flattering, but when you're a stranger in a city where she doesn't speak the language, it's common to want to be a little anonymous. Yet when we're out in Paris making beautiful images, she's the opposite of anonymous. I have to give her credit. She's been doing amazing work even with lots of eyeballs on her. We've created some great images together.

But I think Parisiens look at beauty in a much different way than in other places. The men certainly stop and look. But it's not leering in the creepy way that I see in the States. One man on a bike rode past us and then turned around down the street and rode past us again. But it wasn't uncomfortable. It's quick appreciative glances, never staring.

Even the younger boys seem to have an unusual level of appreciation and respect for their ages. They take shy hesitant glances our way and quickly avert their eyes. I think Europeans, and most certainly the French, have a much healthier philosophy on beauty and bodies and fashion and art and how it all is part of living.

Since I also spend a lot time creating art involving nudity, it's been such a refreshing experience once again to be in a country and a city like Pairs where the human body and is not looked at as something to be hidden or ashamed of. I consider myself lucky to have lived in many different cities all over the world in my life, some very briefly and some for years at a time and I can usually tell very quickly which ones feel like they fit.

I can understand why so many artists come to Paris to explore their art. I'm typing this wearing a watch I bought in Milan, Italy some years ago. On the face is an photograph by Man Ray called "Return to Reason" which he made in Paris in 1923 in Montmarte. Morgan and I were in the Cemetere Montmarte on Monday where he is buried. I use the phrase "good ghosts" a lot. Like, "This building has good ghosts." What I mean by that is the place has the spirit of positive energy from people who were here before me.

Paris has good ghosts. Man Ray is one of them. I like creating art in a city where so much wonderful art has been created before. When I create art in a place like this I feel a sense of camaraderie with other artists who have inspired me over the years. A bit like a humanhood.

I've felt many times in my life that I was living somewhere that I didn't really fit in. A bit like an alien. The people around me didn't get who I was or what I was trying to do. Not that it really mattered I guess. But sometimes it's a little difficult to be on a different page all of the time. Although maybe it has made me focus more on what I knew to be my own personal truth.

And I think ultimately it has been the thing that has made me the happiest in my life.

And that's why Paris makes me so happy as well. It's a city that inspires me to really remember what is most important to me. It clarifies what I love about my own work. It realigns my priorities in a very pleasant way.

Paris reminds me to live.

And now I have created art in Paris like I never have before.

L'art est ma vie !

It's really amazing how many people we both know happen to be in Europe at the same time we are. We're traveling to Dijon to see Morgan's cousin Garnet and his girlfriend Nicoletta. The other day we had coffee with Zac, a friend of mine who is originally from near Nice but has been living the last few years in the States. Zac was officially our first guest we received in our apartment here. He's got the summer off before he starts college at Cal Arts and so he's making his way around Europe before he has to get back to school. Jillian Ann is here in Europe as well, although not in France at the moment. Another favorite model of mine, Frances, stopped in Paris for a few days on her way back to the States after two weeks in Italy and we spent some time with her. A friend of Morgan's called Dan will be coming through Paris with his girlfriend in a few days who we'll hopefully cross paths with before we leave.

After Dijon... the train ride back

Life is funny sometimes. But I like it best when it's unpredictable. French is a language of nuance. And I've been taught once again that life is in the details.

Morgan's cousin Garnet, who is currently living in Dijon, helped us with our accommodations there. He suggested we investigate the beautiful castle Hôtel Chambellan, so I Googled it from Paris and found pictures on one site and the address and email info on another. We made the reservations in French with no trouble.

We arrived in Dijon after our very comfortable ride on the TGV, and Garnet met us at the train station and walked us about a half a mile to our hotel. The woman at the check-in desk was very nice and showed us to our room, which was adequate and clean, but didn't feel very castle-like. We looked around for the beautiful winding stone staircase I saw in the internet pictures, figured it much be in another part of the hotel, dropped our bags off and set out on what was to be a great day of exploring Dijon with Garnett, his girlfriend and another friend of theirs.

Dinner, drinks, cafés, great conversation, a stop on Garnet's little rooftop terrace, bar hopping and finally bed.

We woke up the next morning and I went to the front desk to ask if we could have petit déjeuner delivered to our room. A few minutes later, a very friendly, joyful woman knocked on our door and brought in a beautiful spread of du café, du chocolat, du pain, du lait, des la confiture, et du beurre.

It was delicious, and just the thing you need after a long night of sampling wine and cocktails in Dijon. Garnett's girlfriend Nicolette is amazing. She's from Romania and is teaching a group of French students in Dijon for the summer for an American University in Ohio. She speaks something like four languages fluently and is conversational in a few more. How's that for cool?

Anyway we've been expanding our vocabularies like crazy in French and learning a little Romanian as well now and my favorite new phrase in that language is what they call a hangover. I'm not sure how to spell it so I'll just say that it translates to "my helmet is too tight."

Brilliant.

Morgan and I both had tight helmets this morning, so our lovely breakfast helped us get back on our feet in short order. We packed and got ready to check out, but we were still curious about the beautiful stone staircase we saw in the pictures. So Morgan suggested I ask the woman at the desk where it was.

Funny thing.

It turns out that there is a Hôtel Chambellan as well as a Hôtel le Chambellan. I've been taking French for long enough to know that using the wrong article can change meaning pretty dramatically.

I had looked at two different hotels on two different internet sites and thought they were the same one. Makes sense. 50 Euro seems a bit inexpensive to stay in a castle.

C'est la vie.

I realize I'm getting behind in my storytelling. I haven't had much of a chance to talk about Paris, but I'd better write a few things about Dijon while they're still in my head.

We had an amazing time. Garnet is that rare blend of brilliant and funny and just an all around nice amazing guy. He was a most generous host providing a great walking tour both Tuesday and Wednesday, with plenty of stops along the way at fun cafés and restaurants and markets.

Nicoletta joined us as much as she could around her obligations with her students. Garnett's friend Laurant stopped by to join us a few times and we got to see his incredibly hip bar and restaurant.

It was a very international group of us all talking and laughing and teaching each other useful phrases and pronunciation. Laurant now nows how to correctly use the phrase "fly-ass" in conversation. And we all have our tight helmets. And great memories of Dijon.

Politics... sex... privacy... cinema... art... healthcare... capitalism vs. socialism... the heinous American foreign policy... and the general distress that George Bush is at the wheel of a country that affects so many other countries. Many rounds of drinks and espressos.

We're about ready to arrive back home in Paris in a few minutes, so that will be all for now. But it's really been a wonderful experience and we still have a few more days left.

Back home in Paris. I like the sound of that. We love our apartment here. It's so comfortable and perfect.

Sorry there are so few pictures to go along with these blogs, but we just have so many to go through and pick from that we'll probably have to leave that for when we get back, although, as always, Morgan manages to get a some great images of our adventures up on her blog.

À demain. Au revoir !

Vacances en France

No time for a blog... seems to always be the case... having too much fun and relaxing and creating art and fashion photographs.

But today we're taking the TGV to Dijon on our little French Holiday as all Parisiens do this time of year. So in that spirit, we'll be in the French countryside doing what we do best... living.

We're staying in a beautiful 15th century castle. Never done that before.

more later...

La vie est belle

More stories from Paris

Bonjour encore à Paris !

Hello again from Paris !

Still no time to write, but Morgan has some fun pictures and stories posted of our adventures here. Enjoy!

Au revoir !

Bonjour de Paris !

This is our 6th day in Paris, and I'm happy to say it's the first time I've really sat down at the computer to do something other than look up an address or work on my French translation. It's been good to be away from all things computer while in Paris. If you've been reading the links to Morgan's blog, you know we're relaxing and having a great trip so far, not really doing much work, but enjoying the pace of Paris and the language and the art and culture and becoming inspired for what we will create while we're here.

In the frenzy to get everything put together before we left the States, some things didn't get quite finished. Almost, but not quite. It took me several hours to pack up all the couture we were planning to bring with us, and by the time I finished that and got all the camera gear packed and my personal clothes, the limo was set to arrive way sooner than I was prepared for, so I threw the unfinished work in a suitcase and brought it along.

One of the nice things, and there are so many, about having an apartment here this time around is that we truly can live and work here. If we thought our trip last September felt like living in Paris, this visit completely overshadows that one. We have a lovely little kitchen and we've been using it pretty much non stop. It's nice to know that since we're cooking dinner at home a lot of the time that we can always splurge on a few extra bottles of wine every day and not worry about the bills when we get back to the States.

Yesterday was portfolio day. Morgan and I have really come into our own with our recent work and it was an absolute pleasure to go through our books and replace some of our older work with the more recent photographs. That was one of the unfinished pieces of business that got shoved in a suitcase at the last minute, so I brought my cutting board and exacto knife and trimmed all the photos to size here in our apartment.

Morgan has been writing the modeling agencies here to get some information on perhaps working here and after our portfolio day yesterday, I really have to say I'm blown away by what she's accomplished in less than a year. Our photos of her have grown in strength and beauty and attitude. So much so that some of our recent work I can honestly say are some of the finest photographs I have ever made. She's certainly beautiful, but what makes her a joy to photograph is what's inside. She's a true artist and I think our work has become a valued collaboration, each of us pushing the other beyond what we may have thought we were both capable of. It's a great artistic relationship.

And then there's Paris! An hour doesn't go by here when I'm not grateful that I made the decision to go to school to learn French. I've been taking classes since last December at Alliance Française in Chicago. It's been one of the most challenging things I've ever done in my adult life. Learning a language is not something you casually take up as a hobby. It requires a great commitment of time and energy, two things that I seem to just barely keep up with the demand for them. Between my photography work, film editing and learning French, there really isn't much time for anything else. Perhaps that's why even though Morgan and I have alllllllllmost had a couple of photoshoots since we arrived, I think we both needed a little time to relax and clear our heads. We mutually decided not to rush things or force ourselves to be creative too soon. Paris has a very specific heartbeat and we know we'll make amazing images if we simply allow ourselves to get in sync with the pulse of Paris.

One of our favorite ways to end the day is to finish dinner and move out onto our balcony overlooking Boulevard Saint-Michel. We usually finish off our second bottle of wine, and then a third, all the time watching the Tour Eiffel go through it's pattern of light shows as the sun sets and finally becomes night around 11. It's those moments of talking and laughing on our little balcony with a view that can only be described as cinematic, when we both realize how fortunate we are to be here, enjoying perhaps the most beautiful city in the world in a way few get to experience.

More later... back to Paris.

Au reviour et bonne journée !

Special Guest Blog

Bonjour Readers and Devoted Fans!

This is Morgan, writing a blog for Billy. Unfortunately, he is having to much fun to find a moment to write. The time will come, so hang in there and have faith. Until then, feel free to read my blog, which can be reached below. I think you will be pleasantly surprised with my thoughts, as sometimes Billy like to say, "Its not just a pretty place to hang a hat!"

Enchanté et Bon Lecture!

le Blog

Dimanche matin à Paris

I'll write a proper blog soon... really... But for now here's more from Morgan on her blog.

Nous arrivons à Paris !

We're still unpacking and Morgan beat me to the computer, so rather than retype the news of our arrival in Paris and our beautiful apartment here. I'll just point you to Morgan's blog.

She has captured perfectly our first few hours here in beautiful Paris !

Nous aimons Paris !

Surprise Phone Call

I love it when something happens during the day that I wasn't expecting that brings a smile to my face. I picked up the phone and heard a slightly familiar voice on the other end. It was my friend Colleen who has been living in the Netherlands for the past decade. We were amazingly close friends and as sometimes happens with friendships they grow and fade over the years.

But she's been on my mind a lot lately and I've been hoping to reconnect with her.

"Bonjour, mon ami!"

It took me a second... actually, more than a second... she had to tell me, "It's Colleen," before I could align my synapses. Picture a team of brain cells hastily running up and down ladders in some big libary-like-warehouse, opening and closing cabinets and scanning shelves, looking for the name that belonged to the voice on the other end of the phone speaking to me in French.

There is no way we could catch up on the last ten years on the phone in a few minutes, and so when we discovered that even though I was going to be in Europe for the next few weeks, she wasn't going to be, so we made other plans to catch up before the end of summer.

But it was good to hear her voice again. She and I used to have breakfast every Saturday morning at this little diner on Lincoln Avenue called S&G. I don't remember how long a period of time we would meet there. Months certainly... years perhaps. We tried to figure out a lot of things going on in our lives at the time, and maybe we were successful at finding about half of the answers. The rest we would both have to wait for more life experience before we could find the handle on the really tough ones.

Maybe that's why I am looking forward to catching up with her. I think we both have a lot more life answers than we did eating greasy breakfast at S&G.

I remember packing my studio up one day and bringing it all over to her place in the Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago, around the corner from the Music Box Theater and shooting all day. She used to be a dancer and we tried all kinds of things. It was the first time I was able to shoot on true hardwood floors and her ceilings were high enough for her to jump a bit as well. We shot all day, until we were both beat. The first image you see is actually fairly early in the shoot. There is another photo of her doing an amazing jump which I love and I'll have to scan again since I can't seem to find a digital file of it anywhere, but I do have the first one I'm posting here and another we took at the very end of the shoot when we were both too tired to move much at all.

It's funny how my files of film negatives are as much of a journal of my adult life as anything I could write in a blog or journal. All these years later they reveal my dreams, my loves, my frustrations, my sorrows, my discoveries, my self awareness. Thousands of rolls of film. All little time capsules of people and places through the years.

So many images in fact that I recently purchased a second safe to keep them in, as the first one could no longer fit them all. That and the help of a wonderful film student named Caitlin who's helping keep things from getting too out of control this summer has resulted in my completing something that I've been trying to accomplish for the last four years.

So many photoshoots, images, negatives. It's been hard to keep up with the very necessary and critical filing and storage of them all. So to say I've been behind in keeping all of that in order would be an understatement. But as of this week, we finally got caught up. Every roll of film, every sheet of negatives has been cataloged and placed into one of my many binders and filed away in the film safes to provide much needed protection from things that can damage irreplaceable negatives.

It's an amazing feeling to have that accomplished. Thanks Caitlin. She's off very soon to the very prestigious film school of the great ones, USC, to continue the very beginnings of her soon to be amazing film making career. She's ambitious and talented and it will be fun to watch her work as it happens. But this summer she helped me with mine and I'll always be grateful.

And in a matter of days Morgan and I will continue our own photography adventures in Paris. Our apartment there is waiting and we've both spent the last few weeks preparing for weeks of shooting in one of the most beautiful and inspiring cities in the world.

Nous allons à Paris le vendredi !

I've worked until the sun has come up many times in the last few days, only put my head down for a couple of hours and start again with not nearly enough rest, but perhaps this time I'll be exhuasted enough to sleep as we fly over the Atlantic - something I never seem to be able to do. I think we'll barely get everything finished in time. Just barely.

We have a dinner planned the evening before we leave, to catch our breath for a moment, go over everything one more time, the clothes, the locations, which new photos to put in our portfolios for the trip, the ideas, the art of it all, and then remember not to plan it all too well! Morgan and I have learned that the best plans sometimes are none at all, but simply to be open to the moment. And so we will remember to let Paris guide us. Listen to la Seine. Walk slowly through les jardins. Let le soleil warm our faces and find inspiration in les nuages. Wrap ourselves in la nuit. Feel les spiritueux of those who have walked les vieilles rues before us.

So we will board our Air France flight, close our eyes et nous nous réveillerons à Paris.

Les Bleus !

So on Sunday, I'll be at my French School, Alliance Française to watch les Bleus, or for you Yanks, the French national football team take on Italy for the Coupe du Monde... Yes, the World Cup. I guess I was always one of those Americans who thought it was a little odd that we called our championship baseball series the World Series since, at least until very recently, the rest of the world pretty much hasn't managed to spend much time with a bat and baseball.

No the World Cup is actually a world event, even though Americans have been slow on the uptick on that one. But since I'm a guy who really doesn't care when the Chicago Bears report to training camp, I surprised myself by being completely caught up in the World Cup this year. A group of friends and I actually got up at 5am four years ago to watch the matches live from South Korea, so keeping up with them in the middle of the day in the States has been comparatively easy this time around.

But there I was on Wednesday evening at Alliance Française after class excitedly talking about Thierry Henry and Zinédine Zidane like they were boyhood heroes. And I was doing it in French no less!

In fact I've been scouring the internet to find foreign language coverage of the matches since the American commentators seem to be about as up on World Cup Football as... well... average Americans. So yes, I've been enjoying watching in Spanish, French and German, complete with commercials better than they are here.

But perhaps it's no coincidence that I'm really enjoying the Coupe du Monde this year because France has come from nowhere and has a very real shot at beating Italy on Sunday. Morgan and I are heading to our apartment in Paris in an ever diminishing number of days, and the buzz of France and the games and the fact that I'm already starting to throw things in my suitcase, has me positively giddy.

Ah Paris!

But it hasn't been all packing and footballing around here the last few weeks. I've been doing quite of bit of shooting with some results that I simply couldn't be happier with. So many new amazing images that I'm actually getting behind in getting them out into the wild here!

These are from a shoot I had a couple of weeks ago with two models I've never worked with from the East Coast named Elizabeth and Melissa. I do seem to photograph a lot of Melissas as time goes by. I think this is my third Melissa in this first image and she was great fun to work with.

The second image is using the beautiful natural light that streams into my studio this time of year against my red wall. I decided to make this image B&W even though the red was incredibly vivid.... or maybe exactly because of that. I'm still careful about introducing color to my art in some instances because I think it changes the meaning to something I'm not about.

So many more images from this shoot and others coming very soon!

Vive la France !