Walking on the Moon

By the time my head hit my pillow Monday night, I could hardly stop smiling. I usually prefer to space out when good things happen so as not to have too many low valleys in between, but some days are just so full of wonderfulness that it's almost hard to process. Monday was one of those... "Really? There's another amazing thing happening to me today?! Well... wow... okay... thank you!"

First the walking part. For about a year and a half now I've been walking about five miles a day. That, in addition to eating things that are much better for me has resulted in the healthiest me in a long time. But that walking can take a toll. I've been having severe pain on my heels, to the point where it's just agony to put weight on them.

I finally found a good doctor to have a look at them and yesterday was the day I was going in for a full evaluation. I didn't know what to expect. Was I going to walk out in a cast on crutches? Scheduling surgery? I really couldn't guess.

The good news turned out to be that I had inflamed plantar fascia in both feet, and it had not progressed to the point where I needed to do much more than I was already doing. I had recently bought a few pairs of expensive but well made shoes with special arch support to more evenly distribute the pressure on my feet, and then there was that 100 pounds I'd lost this year. The only other thing my doctor added was to give me special stretching exercises to do several times a day to relieve some of the pressure and tension.

No surgery. No broken bones. No casts. No crutches. Amazing.

Then later that day one of my friends called me into his office and looked me up and down in a slightly worried manner and asked me, "You know, if you keep losing all this weight, are you going to change? I mean, when I stopped drinking I really changed and people said I wasn't as much fun. Are you not going to be as much fun when you're skinny?"

Hmmmm. That was an interesting question. I told him I didn't think I would really change that much. I was happier now that I was healthier and I thought that I might even be a little happier than I had been in the past.

He had a look on his face like he wasn't convinced.

"Well, I'll probably get laid more and that will keep me happy," I offered.

That seemed to satisfy him.

It's been several days since the private art party Morgan and I threw over the weekend and I'm still getting calls and emails from people who want to buy pieces. That was really a wonderful night for so many reasons that have nothing to do with photography sales, but it's also been nice to see how interested people are in my work. It certainly helps to pay a lot of the photo bills this year.

But the thing that really had me buzzing that day, I can't even talk about here. It just would be bad form to talk about it. Plus I don't want to jinx something that hasn't really happened yet.

So I'm afraid I'll have to leave you with this hint. I listened to it while I was walking home on Monday night and it's fairly appropriate.

Giant steps are what you take
Walking on the moon
I hope my legs don't break
Walking on the moon
We could walk for ever
Walking on the moon
We could live together
Walking on, walking on the moon

Walking back from your house
Walking on the moon
Walking back from your house
Walking on the moon
Feet they hardly touch the ground
Walking on the moon
My feet don't hardly make no sound
Walking on, walking on the moon

Some may say
I'm wishing my days away, no way
And if its the price I pay, some say
Tomorrow's another day, you'll stay
I may as well play

"Walking on the Moon"
The Police
from the album Regatta De Blanc
Written by Sting
Reprinted without permission

In a few hours I leave for New York City to celebrate the birthdays of two of my great friends Mark and Cheree. It's a quick trip. I won't even be there 24 hours, but it should be a lot of fun!

I heart NY!

100

A century.

A Franklin.

A hundo.

I was getting ready for a little private art party I was having last night and for some reason I decided to get on my scale. Odd really, I usually only do that in the morning when I get up and I don't really do it that often anyway, but I knew I was getting close to a weight loss milestone and I just decided to see how close I was.

100.

Yeah I've lost 100.

It was a nice way to start the evening.

I've been facing a few personal challenges lately, some of them testing me pretty good, but this one is one that I've been successful at and I'm really happy about it.

The party was thrown for me by Morgan who has spent the last month and a half planning and calling and arranging with all the people you have to do when you plan something like that. It was just basically for family and friends. And it was nice to have them over at my place and look at photographs I had made in the last 15 years or so.

It's nights like that when I really feel how full my life has been. Not perfect certainly, but full of the warmth of really good friends. Friends who are so supportive and so protective of me that it really humbles me.

I won't forget that night. It was wonderful.

The first photo is from a recent shoot with Frances. I've really been enjoying shooting with her the past few months. I feel like with her I'm really breaking some new creative ground. She's been generous and willing to take that leap of faith - the leap that I appreciate these days more than ever.

The second is one of my favorite images of all time. It's the kind of photograph I look at now and know it will still be one of my favorites in ten years. Morgan and I were trying to come up with a way to really blend fashion and my art. To make a true Billy Sheahan image that was as much about fashion as it was about my philosophy of what great art does to me. I think we succeeded!

And as last night wore on and the party guests began to make their farewells, I looked around my space and all the art on the wall at the end of the party. I told a few friends I was sitting with that without the selfless giving of my subjects to me of their time and literally their bodies, my walls would be so much more empty.

And frankly, so would my life and reason for being.

RaaaaoooooaaaaaagggghhHhh!

"You angry??!! Yeah, right."

A rare photograph of Angry Billy, in his natural habitat.

For more fabulous photography by the incredibly talented Heather Hay, head over to My Mom Bought Me a Camera.

She's a genius. And an excellent tracker of wild photographers.

Nous Sommes Désolée

A little over a month ago, I spent many days walking through les jardins du Luxembourg in Paris. Today, marking the 5th anniversary of September 11th, the American flag was raised in that very garden and the American National Anthem was played. I was also in le jardin des Tuileries perhaps the last time the American National Anthem was played in Paris in honor of Floyd Landis, weeks before his Tour de France win was taken away.

But the instance today is the one that has made me pause. After the hysteria of "Freedom Fries" and silly Americans pouring out French wine in protest of a country that didn't follow us blindly into the incredibly regrettable Iraq war, Parisiens today took a moment to remember our loss five years ago.

Would we do the same if the circumstances were reversed?

The French continue to be the butt of sophomoric jokes, yet they raised our flag in one of their most beautiful gardens today. A flag that means something different to the world today than it did five years ago. While we have squandered the good will of the world, a world that was united with us in our grief five years ago, unbelievably, there are still people in the world outside our country that manage to put all of that aside and look at that day from a human standpoint. Something I see us less and less capable of doing as a country.

Maybe when the clock runs out on this administration in two years, the people who take their place will be able to mend what has been broken. The fact that an American flag was raised in les jardins du Luxembourg today, gives me hope that all is not lost.

Nous sommes désolée, France. Être patient avec nous pendant deux années supplémentaires, svp. Merci de ne pas donner vers le haut sur nous.




Les jardins du Luxembourg

Laboring Days

There was a time when I remember a three day weekend meant... well... three days of running around with friends, reaching for beers in coolers in the early afternoons and spending a lot of the time in lawn chairs. It isn't that I don't have the time for that anymore, I guess it's that I don't make the time for that anymore.

I guess that's not entirely true. On Friday I did finish off two bottles of wine with a friend of mine on her back deck as the cool evening air pushed us inside earlier than we wished. So we took our conversation inside until neither of us could stop yawning and we gave in to fatigue.

And I did carve out a nice block of time today to photograph a new model, so I wouldn't say it was all heavy lifting. But there was, and will be more heavy lifting before the weekend finally does end in a few hours. When I moved into my new studio space last year, I never really completely unpacked. Close, but not completely.

A lot of mystery boxes got piled up in my closet and lately the clutter was beginning to get to me. That little cleanup spurred a rather massive and merciless purge of much of my space. It's felt good to clear out space. I think my head has been a little full lately and the physical cleansing has been a nice stand-in for the desire to clear the mental clutter that seems to be diluting my focus as of late.


Nothing like physical labor to knock the voices down a few notches.


In the process of all of that I found a few very interesting things. No fewer than three journals, all in different places. It's interesting to skim back over all those years and see how much progress I've made in some areas of my life, and a distressing lack of it in others. More forward than not though. Progress, not perfection.

And speaking of progress, I haven't quite hit the magic 100 pounds of weight loss just yet, but I'm closing in on it soon. Today I'm wearing a pair of jeans with a waist size 14 inches less than the pants I was wearing at this time last year. That's pretty major. They are a bit snug, but when I decided to give them a try today, I was surprised when I slid them on that they actually fit today. It's not the first time I've tried them on in the last few months. They've been sitting in my closets the last 10 years, hoping to be worn again and for a long time it looked pretty grim.

But not today.

They're the smallest waist jeans I've ever worn as an adult. And like I said they're a bit snug, but I wore them around all day today and even did my photoshoot in them which requires lots of bending, crawling and squatting and I really didn't notice the smaller size.

One of the other happy things this weekend was stumbling across some old photographs from when I was just a little kid at The old White Sox Park around 1970. Yep that's me, my mom, dad and sister. The pictures that don't have people in them are ones I took of the three things that fascinated me at that old park: The exploding scoreboard, the television cameras, and the little ball machine that popped up behind home plate every once in a while during the game to give the umpire new baseballs.

Yep, some vintage Billy Sheahan Photography work. Even then, photographing what I thought was amazing. I'm happy that I haven't progressed past that love in all these years.

September Postcard Vote

I'm in the process of preparing the September postcard. I have it narrowed down to between two images from the recent Melissa rooftop angel shoot. Still doing retouching and color correction on the images, but they're both in a place that at least you can get an overall idea of what the final will look like. Any thoughts on either one? We'll call them "Sitting" and "Hanging" to make it easy to differentiate, how about that?

I think I have a favorite between the two, but this is a hard one this month. If you'd rather not post a public notice, simply email me at september@billysheahan.com and let me know what your thoughts are.

I've never really put the postcard out to a vote before and I may never again (!) but I thought it might be fun this time just this once.

And just a little background on both of these images. They were both shot with a Canon 5D digital camera, which is a 12 megapixel camera, accounting for all the detail. It's actually the first digital camera besides a $30k digital back I once had access to for a day, that I really think makes images that rival my film work.

Since digital is always a color image, I've had to learn how to use the various color channels in combination to find just the right monochrome look. It's never just a matter of turning the color off. It's more like having three different intensities of B&W that each respond differently to colors and finding a balance between them that brings out certain details in the gray palettes. A little complicated at first, but it makes sense after doing it for a while.

Okay, so much for the behind the scenes. Let me know what you think!

The Chill of Summer

There's been something in the air the last few days. A chill. August is barely out the door and I feel a cool that can only mean change is on the way.

As I kid, I always hated August because it meant the finale of summer and all things fun. The words Back to School Sale were harbingers of the end of carefree days.

This time I'm embracing the chill like an old friend. I'm shedding my summer skin and looking to the future. It's easy to get complacent during the summer. But I don't feel complacent anymore. I was walking the other evening and felt the cold on my face and felt it wash away a kind of mental slumber. It was a slap to wake up.

I got slapped good this week.

And at first I was sad. But then I got angry. And I woke up. And I'm stronger now.

I took the first steps to take a more active control of the future of my photography. I made a few phone calls and made another sale of one of my big pieces. I'm having dinner with a great friend tonight who runs in some nice art circles and she's going to help me with my marketing and help me get into more art shows than I have been able to do on my own.

I spent a lot of time with friends in the last few days that I haven't seen in a while. I think they could all sense I was going through something and they came out of the woodwork. It felt warm and very pleasant. Another great friend of mine is returning from the U.K. in a week or two after being gone for four years. It will be good to have her back in drinking distance.

I've been cleaning like crazy. Organizing. Getting rid of the clutter. It feels good. Fall cleaning. Deep breaths. Fresh space to work.

I was sending out the August postcards this week, (yes, very late, but I'm already working on the September postcard, so I won't be so far behind on that one!) and I was inspecting the addresses as they came out of the printer. The mailing list is a bit of a time machine for me. It needs to be updated, and I'll probably tackle that this weekend as well. Like a closet full of old clothes, there is an expiration date.

I'm shooting with a new model this weekend. Very promising. Early, but the connection with her feels good so far.

And I've really been enjoying editing the shoot I did with Melissa last weekend. As always it has yielded unique and wonderful images. Things I've never done before. She's a great collaborator.

So yes, summer is over and maybe not a moment too soon. A bit sad to see it go in a way, but for the first time in my life, I'm looking forward to fall and the changes and new adventures it will bring.