Water shoot

Just a quick one today.

Good news. I believe in the next few weeks, after a year of planning, I will realize a photoshoot idea that I'm very excited about.

I figured out how to do it over the winter and have been gathering supplies for it since then. It involves water - lots of water - and the engineering of it has finally come into place.

But hopefully the resulting images will be simply breathtaking and not about the engineering or the logistics or anything like that. Images that at least in my mind will be some of the most amazing I have ever created.

I'm not going to discuss it here in any detail because it's better to have the photographs speak for themselves.

But I'm really looking forward to it.

Angel-A

Every once in a while I find myself just struggling to create. And I don't mean that I have some kind of block. What I mean is that there seem to be a ridiculous number of obstacles in my way. I spend more time and energy trying to create situations when I can create my art rather than actually doing it. I find myself exhausted so much of the time and have very little or nothing to show for it.

It's like a drought.

I'm doing the raindance like crazy. Out there working it and working it. Putting so much time and commitment into it that when a few months go by and I still have nothing to show for it, it's... well... disheartening.

So I keep fighting and fighting.

But there comes a point when I just throw up my hands and say, OK, I'm going to just walk away for a while. It's just a battle I'm tired of fighting.

It shouldn't be this hard.

I'm definitely in one of those throw up my hands places now. I feel like a painter without paint. A sculptor without stone.

I'm sitting in a movie theatre as I write this waiting for the movie to start. In a few minutes I'll be watching a film by Luc Besson called Angel-A. He says it's his last film. Maybe he's gotten tired of fighting the system too. It's set in Paris and he photographed it in beautiful black and white. I'm hoping to walk out with at least some inspiration. Something hopeful.

I'm a little concerned that I'm going to walk out of the theatre sad. That's what I don't need right now. Paris is a beautiful city. But sometimes it can have a strange effect on me. Hard to explain. But sometimes I feel a sense of loss when I'm reminded of the parisien streets and places I've been there. Like I said. Hard to explain.

The story I'm about to see is about a man who has given up. He feels trapped and doesn't know what to do.

This will be interesting to see how it affects me.

We'll see.

____________

Well it was a great film, as I thought it would be. Now I'm typing on my roof with a bottle of wine next to me.

Paris is such a beautiful city on film. So interesting to see all the streets and bridges and monuments that have become so familiar to me over the years. Especially in the beautiful black and white that Besson's director of photography Thierry Abogast has captured.

Of course that is after I had to leave the theater to tell the manager to have someone check the focus on the projector. It's amazing how many times I have to do that. I mean it wasn't even close. And with a movie with subtitles, it gets annoying very quickly. Pretty sloppy at Pipers Alley Theaters in Chicago.

But anyway, it was a strange experience for me to see that particular film today. I was pretty much the only one in the theater tonight. Maybe one or two people behind me. So I knew it was going to feel like a very personal experience. And it was.

A few times I really felt like the film was speaking to me directly. Not in the usual way that you identify with characters. No, this was something more this time.

There is a scene with André, the main character, looking in a mirror. He's being coached to find himself by AngelA, a beautiful mysterious chain smoking woman who suddenly appears to him and is guiding him through about 24 hours of his life. And it was the strangest sensation I was having while watching it.

Je t'aime. Je t'aime.

It was like Besson was telling me something I struggle with all the time.

So I'm sitting her tonight trying to soak it all in. How I feel about so much.

I know that struggles are part of the artistic process. It's a constant battle. But it makes me weary sometimes. I wish I could put my full energy into making my art instead of being so exhausted by the time I get there that I have little left to give to create it.

It's interesting. When I walk the streets of Paris there is a lot of artistic inspiration, but I also feel the pain of the ghosts of artists that have struggled before me. A friend of mine once told me of a conversation she was having with a mutual friend of ours, "You know, maybe Billy needs the pain to create what he does." And maybe I do. Maybe that's why my art seems to speak to so many people the way it speaks to me.

I guess I'm not alone even though in times like this I really feel like I am.

Billy Sheahan June Postcard

One of my biggest challenges when shooting fashion is to try to create an image that showcases the dress or jewelry or, in this case, fabulous shoes, but do it in a way that still feels like art. It's a hard line to walk sometimes.

I have beautiful light coming in from the west in my studio and depending on the time of year or the time of day, it's better light than I could ever hope to create artificially. There's just something about shooting without a lot of cords and electricity and just following the sun around my studio that is more freeing than being tethered to something stationary.

It becomes a bit of a dance. Waiting for the right moment as the sun creates amazing shadows that creep across the walls and floor. No rewinding. No going back. Just making the most out of an ever changing moment.

And I think that's what's most rewarding about an image like this. Just the basics. My beautiful model Frances, a camera, a tricycle, and perfect natural light. When all the moments converge together and you know you have the shot, it's when fashion meets art in the most amazing way.


_________

Welcome to the June Billy Sheahan Photography email postcard. You can receive this postcard in your email inbox every month by signing up here.
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Thank your for all your support and I hope you continue to enjoy my work.

Billy

WTF is going on out there?!

Random thoughts....

It's a beautiful Sunday morning. I've been out for a 3 mile walk already today but something isn't sitting right with me. I'm feeling overwhelmed or something. Let's see what's on my mind today...

Seems like in the last month I've become more aware of people just out there treating each other badly. I listen. And maybe what I'm feeling is just making me feel like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders.

Both immediately around me and globally.

I've been reading Al Gore's new book The Assault on Reason. It's very good but troubling. And maybe I'm feeling like it's applying to so many things I come across these days.

Most immediately in my personal bubble, I'm stunned at the thoughtlessness that it seems my friends are dealing with in their lives.

Dating...

What is it with guys these days? There seems to be an epidemic of shady guys out there treating women like they're cable boxes, just flipping channels and being generally idiots to the women they come in contact with.

Women just don't trust men any more and it's no wonder. Women are understandably losing their minds because of it. They're being damaged.

But there are two sides to every coin. Women, if you keep hanging out and hooking up with shady guys, you're training them to continue this behavior. I know dangerous cool guys are attractive, but you pack your own parachute. Beautiful asshole = eventual unhappiness. Write it down and put it on your refrigerator if you have to.

So we end up with incredible cycles of dysfunction that perpetuate for as long as we all keep playing these games.

It's hard for me to keep listening to.

America in general...

Can we all stop feeding our minds the junkfood of Paris, Lindsay, Jenwhoever...

I mean I like escape as much as the next person, but eating nothing but french fries will kill you, and America, you're killing your ability to understand what's going on in the world around you.

The media will do just about anything for your eyeballs and like a 3 year old reaching for gummy bears, it's feeding junk to you and you're too hypnotized to realize that very powerful people want you to just shut up and eat your gummy bears in your child safety seat and enjoy the ride in the back of your monstrosity of an SUV.

Your ignorance is their bliss.

Keep it up and you won't recognize the country you live in. And FYI, it's already changed in the last six years in ways you wouldn't believe if you stopped obsessing about Paris behind bars and had an adult conversation.

Look, I don't want this to turn into a lecture (too late), but we're all lowering our standards. However, it's happening so slowly that most of us aren't noticing it. With our friends, our bedmates, what we choose to watch on TV and read in magazines, how we relate to the rest of the world, what we're doing to the environment, what we're willing to give up by not demanding that we need to drastically reduce our consumption of oil.

It really begins one foot from our faces in our personal space and radiates out to encompass the entire world.

I'm sad today thinking about all of this. I'm tired.

But there are some of us who do think. Who do give a damn about how we treat the person next to us in a bar, or how our government treats the rest of the world.

I'm one of them. One of the good guys who won't mess with your head to get you into bed. I care how our country is affecting your country. We're still out there. But sadly these days, you have to look really really hard to find us.

I took this image of Stella in a beautiful white dress on Friday. Sometimes I just have to retreat into my art to get away from all the noise.... and sadness of what we have become.

No (more) smoking

I just had my last cigarette on my roof a few minutes ago, just before midnight.

That may come as a surprise to a lot of people who know me. Not because they think it might be a battle to quit smoking, but because most people probably didn't know I smoked.

I really had my first cigarette in Paris last summer. I mean that's what you do in Paris. You smoke. At cafés. At dinner. You just smoke in Paris. And so I did.

When I came back home to Chicago, I would smoke the occasional cigarette just to show off my new smoking skills. But my friend Heather really helped me perfect my method. How to hold it in my mouth. How to hold it in my hand, so I wouldn't look like the rookie that I was.

Then I advanced to more sophisticated mannerisms such as the pause for dramatic effect.

"So we walked into the club, past the velvet ropes, sat down at a VIP table and before I know it.... (take a long drag... and as I begin to exhale, continue) ...we were making out in front of everyone."

Very effective storytelling tool.

As a photographer, I hang out with lots of models. And it seems that most models smoke. And I think that's really when I started smoking in earnest this year, in January. When I was shooting one model friend of mine, Lynn, after we would get done with a set we'd pause for a minute to figure out what we were going to do next and she came up with the phrase, "Do you wanna smoke about it?" And so we'd have a few cigarettes and talk about the next idea.

So it continued on. I started to buy cartons of cigarettes in Indiana while visiting my parents because in Chicago, a pack can be as much as $8.50, but in Indiana you can get a carton of ten packs for $35.

Well I was starting to be pretty much a major smoker. I began smoking alone while walking around the city. I knew that was a big concession, because up until then I would only smoke with other smokers. Now I was doing it because I wanted to.

Sometimes I would smoke four on my two mile walk from my studio to downtown. If I was out at a bar or club, I could smoke a pack in a day.

It was interesting to see smoking from the other side. I mean I went 40 years without smoking and here I was taking it up like it was my job.

I used to be very anti smoking. I remember in college getting in huge fights with my smoker friends because their cigarettes actually gave me a headache.

But as with most things in life, you kind of chill out with a little life experience and it really stopped bothering me.

So after going from zero my whole life to a pack a day in four months, what made me stop? Well I knew it was all pretty much an experiment. I knew I wasn't really a smoker. I care too much about my health. I could feel my body start to feel worse the days after I smoked a lot.

But I think the one thing that pushed me to really pick a day to stop was a conversation with another of my model friends called Stella. She is the rare model who never smoked and she never really approved of my starting. She would glare at me every time she saw me light up and I would look at her and smile and say something like, "Well I like to try new things and I've never tried smoking before."

And she replied, "Well you know something else you haven't tried? Quitting smoking!"

I had to laugh. She was right. So in honor of her, I decided to stop smoking the day of our next shoot. Which is tomorrow.

I think I started for the same reasons anyone starts smoking. My friends did. It was something to do during the day when I wanted to get away from my computer and head outside to take a break. Smoking is a very social thing.

And it was sort of like sitting in the back of the bus. When I work downtown, I work in an office building on Michigan Avenue and there is a button in the elevator that takes you to the lower level of the building, the back door below Michigan Avenue. The button is marked LL for lower level or lower lobby or something like that.

So me and the other smokers began calling our little gang, Club LL. And it became something I really looked forward to every day. I'd meet friends out there. People I worked with.

I really get why people smoke. I liked to do it myself. It was fun. But like I said. It was an experiment and I'm glad I stopped before I got hooked. Not good for me. I have too much to do and endangering my health wasn't part of my plan.

Before I started smoking, I always carried a zippo lighter with me so I could light my friends' smokes for them even though I didn't. I'll probably still carry around the lighter, because I always enjoyed participating in smoking that way, and that's what I'll do again.

You can't bum a cigarette off me any more, but you can have a light.