How we did the Black Pond Shoot

I'm up on the roof tonight and it's starting to rain, so I may have to move inside soon. I love it up here though. I've grown to love coming up here to write, talk with visiting friends, have a bottle of wine, under the stars with the skyline as the backdrop. Quite lovely.

And speaking of lovely, I've gotten such amazing and positive responses from the recent Black Pond shoot. It was a year in the making and it turned out just as incredible as I hoped it would in my head when I began thinking about it.

So I've decided to pull back the curtain on this one. And talk about how it came to be.

I knew I wanted to try something in very shallow water in a black environment. Nothing but a model and the reflections. Originally I was going to build the set in my studio, but as I was explaining it to my friends Mark and Melissa when we were out to breakfast months ago, the looks on their faces were at once both intrigue by the concept and mortification that I might flood my studio and the neighbors space below me if something went wrong.

They had a point.

So we decided it might be best to build it in their garage. So over a three day period a couple of weeks ago, they moved their cars out and I moved my studio in and Mark and I built the pond set. It's actually very simple as you can see by this photograph before we moved all the lights and equipment in. And a lot smaller than most people imagined.

Ah the magic of photography. With the right lighting and lenses we turned this small space into a huge black cavernous pond.

Since I needed to control the lighting and we didn't want to give the neighbors a show, we had to work with the garage completely closed. And a garage in August in Chicago is hot. But the good thing was since we were filling up the pond with the garden hose, the water was cold. So Frances eased herself into the couple of inches of water very slowly each time. I have to admit I was a little jealous having to work outside of the cooling water in the heat!

But it was great fun. A really collaborative creation on both of our parts. I had rented the headdresses from Chicago Costume the day before, hoping they would look as amazing in the reflections as they did.

We shot with studio strobes, but I left the shutter open for two seconds and moved the camera as Frances also moved in time with each exposure, creating the ghostly blur you see in the photographs.

And while we were shooting, Mark and Melissa we preparing amazing snacks and drinks for us when we would take breaks to clear our heads, and finally dinner as we finished for the day around 10 that evening.

Quite the incredible shoot day. My great thanks to Frances, and Mark and Melissa and everyone who listened to me work the concept and execution of the shoot out over the past year. It was one of my favorite photographic experiences I've ever been a part of!

Billy Sheahan August Postcard

You can purchase a 16x11" signed print of the photograph in this postcard or any of the past postcards for $25 for a limited time. Details below....

Time is your friend. A little over a year ago, a vague image came to me, as most shoot ideas most often begin. I love working with water in my photography and I was contemplating different ways to create with it in my work. Just as the pool shoot a while back took a year from the first little brain bubble to the final realization, this one took it's time as well.

It's funny how much life can go by in a year. Friends come and go... and come again. Frances and I hadn't worked together in about a year and when I finally figured out how to move my idea from inside my head to an actual photograph, the opportunity to collaborate with her again on this project arrived with perfect timing.

The actual shoot took about three days, moving my studio to my good friends Mark and Melissa's house, their garage specifically, building the Black Pond set, filling it with water from their garden
hose, shooting and breaking it down at the end so their cars could have a home again. As the shoot progressed, we knew something special was happening. Behind the scenes images can be found on my blog.

It was well worth the wait.

Life. It's all in the timing.

_________

Welcome to the August Billy Sheahan Photography email postcard.

NEW! You can now purchase signed 11x16" prints of the photographs of Billy's monthly postcard photography.

Until September 30th, all postcard photographs from the past two years are available for $25 each, plus $4 shipping in the USA.

After September 30th, each current month's photograph will continue to be available for $25, but all previous month's photos will be available at the regular price of $40.

Click here to view the postcard photograph sale page.

You can also receive this postcard, free, in your email inbox every month by signing up here.
You can unsubscribe at any time at the same link.

In addition, if you prefer, I'm still offering the traditional monthly postcards, mailed to your postal address for $25 for 12 months. You can purchase a 12 month postcard subscription or larger prints of my photography here.

You can see more of my photography at billysheahan.com.

Feel free to pass this along to anyone you think might enjoy it.

Thank your for all your support and I hope you continue to enjoy my work.

Billy

Hello, 15 year old Bill(y)!

I'm stealing a most excellent idea from my great friend Monkaey and I'm writing a letter/blog entry to my 15 year old self. Here goes....

Hey there 15 year old Billy! I know you officially dropped the Y from your name in 6th grade and you prefer to be called Bill these days, but it seems like everyone likes to call you Billy in the future, so you eventually give up and embrace your Y again. It really fits you. You turn out to be a really fun guy and I guess that's why people choose to call you Billy again. Bill is a little too serious for who you become.

It's 1979 for you now and I have lots of things to tell you from the future. So let's get started.

I'm here to tell you that you make it to 40 pretty much unscathed. Nice work. The 40 year old you is sitting on the roof of your cool loft in downtown Chicago having some wine and writing a blog - which you'll find out what that is all in good time.

You have a few near misses with injury during your life, but you have your health now and with the exception of an evening in the emergency room in a few years, (an on-stage thespian related accident if you can believe it) you pretty much never see the inside of a hospital except to visit some friends and family down the road.

Mom and Dad are still around and doing well, and your kid sister turns out to be an amazing and responsible person, even though you guys don't see eye to eye during her party monster stage a few years from now. But she's fine, is married and has a few kids by now. So cut her a little slack when you feel like getting all big brother on her.

But let's talk about you now.

You have some exciting things coming up in the next 20 years or so. You have a lot of fun with your high school rock band Meranox, so enjoy that experience, but keep hitting the books because you never get that big record contract you guys are sure is just around the corner. And your favorite band, Styx - well I have two words for you - Mr. Roboto. Yeah, heroes fall hard when they fall.

Turns out you're quite the writer in the future. You dabble with news journalism in college and actually become a news director of a couple of local radio stations before you graduate from Purdue. Not college stations, mind you, the real deal. You even have a little stint as a radio talk show host and you end up as a television news anchor for a brief period of time - all before you're 25. Pretty cool.

Your dreams of being a television cameraman are also realized in that time. And even though you get become a television commercial director as well, your realize the power is really in television and film editing and you head down that path with great success.

And you know how you carry around that little instamatic camera all the time? Turns out you have quite the photographic eye as well. In college, you write news for the Purdue Chronicle and that's where you really start to get into photography in a big way. You even get access to the school darkroom and spend a lot of time in there, learning about B&W photography. You'll build on that for the rest of your life.

Your photography travels will take you around the world. Germany, (the Berlin wall comes down a few years before you get there, so Mom doesn't have to worry about you visiting the Iron Curtain), Italy, Greece, The Netherlands, Czechoslovakia (which is now the Czech Republic), half way to the North Pole in upper Canada, but you really fall in love with France - Paris specifically. So maybe you should consider switching from Spanish to French language classes next year. You eventually learn to speak French down the road, but it would be nice to learn some basics while you're still in high school.

But yeah, you're damn good at photography. I hesitate to tell you this next bit about that because you might try to do it before you're ready, but you end up creating quite a vast amount of photography involving what you would refer to now as naked ladies. Now hold on there... before you wet yourself... it's not the kind of pictures that you have in those magazines stashed in the back of the filing cabinet near your bed. No, dude, just chill and listen to me for a minute. You make amazing art with what you'll learn to call Figure Photography, but you do it in a way that women can really appreciate. Not the cheap crap, okay?

And yeah, so let's talk about the women in your future. You're a good listener and you really respect women as you grow up, so you have lots of great women friends as well as guys you hang out with. You're really a decent human.

You don't get married yet even though you tell everyone you will when you're 23. But that's really ok, because you get to do a lot of cool things like seeing the world without it being at Disneyland with the kids in tow. Really. You're not going to be alone. You have amazing friends and great adventures.

The only pieces of advice I'd like to give you as your older self are as follows: You have a little scare in your junior year of high school with that girl you just took to the Turnabout dance, and since your Catholic High School education doesn't bother to teach you about condoms, I'm going to tell you now. The night in the backseat of Ed Brown's car with your new girlfriend? You're lucky. But you should really stop at Walgreen's and pick up a box of condoms. It's just a scare, but that week the two of you think you're going to be 17 year old parents is a rough one. Don't be embarrassed to ask the nice man at the pharmacy what aisle they're in.

The second thing I would say is you're going to get an application for a credit card your sophomore year in college. Be careful with your credit cards. They will get a little out of control a few times in your life. You shouldn't be paying 21% interest on a pizza you bought three years ago.

And finally, don't be so shy when you develop crushes on girls. It turns out that many times during your life when you were looking across the room, too afraid to tell a girl you liked her, she was looking across the room thinking the same thing about you. But you won't find that out until years later when it is too late. You're a good guy. Girls really like you. Don't sell yourself short.

Ok then, young Bill(y). Go out and have fun knowing the future you turns out just great. Taste life and experience as much as you can. Your future successes and failures make you you. And that you is pretty amazing!

Cheers little Bill(y). I'll be waiting for you on the other side.