A busy good week

It's early Friday morning, but already it feels like it's been a full week. One more day.

New Years Redux, my annual New Years party for those who weren't satisfied with their official New Years Eve, went off splendidly again last Sunday. I always seem to have parties on the coldest nights in Chicago, but it didn't keep a large crowd away that kept growing until we counted down at midnight.

Of course three hours of vacuuming confetti the next day was a bit hysterical. One should always pay attention to confetti launchers with a warning label that reads "OUTDOOR USE ONLY." Oh well.

Thanks to Robert for his fine wine selection as usual.

"This week I also received an email from Doug Menuez, a tremendous photographer and my instructor for the Santa Fe Photography Workshop at the end of the February. I've got some portfolio revisions to finish and a bit of paperwork to prepare for that. It sounds like it's going to be a wonderful week there.

Last night I met my photography rep at O'Hare airport for dinner and a meeting about my current direction. She made reservations for us at a restuarant at the airport Hilton called the Gaslight. She told me on the way in she thought it used to be a speakeasy, and I could see that they hadn't redecorated since prohibition.

Our server arrived dressed in what can only be described as a Playboy bunny outfit, minus the ears and cotton tail, but definitely sporting the appropriate cleavage. I felt like I was in Vegas, which I guess was perfect because it's always strange to be at an airport when I'm not actually flying anywhere. I did feel like I was on vacation for a few hours.

We came up with a good game plan for the next few months and I walked her to security, not knowing whether her flight would manage to leave on time in the snowy weather, but even though the departure board was full of "DELAYED," she managed to get out on time.

I also made tentative plans for a job in New York in early February. I always like working in New York. That city is starting to feel like home to me. I think I'll only be there for a few days, but it will be nice to get back there.

I'm 12,000 words in on the book. It's started to get to the complicated part of fitting all the pieces together in the right order. It's not going to be linear. It starts in the present day and jumps back and forth in time, so it's a bit of a puzzle. I've already been reordering the chapters. But I think it's going to work. Still getting rave reviews on the draft.

And finally I just heard back from a friend of mine in Paris that I rent my apartments from whenever I'm there. He has a nice place for me to stay when I'm there in April. It's in le Marais, which is a great arrondissement to live in. It's a charming little studio near the Hotel de Ville. He's faxing me the lease tomorrow and I'll be all set.

Yes, a busy week. But a good one.

Billy Sheahan January 2008 Postcard

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

Some photographs come out of nowhere. Last month during the crush of holiday parties, deadlines and last minute shopping, I got a call from a friend of mine who needed a quick photograph taken of her to promote a band. I already wasn't getting enough sleep, so I figured, why not. We found a few hours between obligations one evening and made plans to shoot.

Lisa needed a picture of herself in a yellow t-shirt. I never really found out what the significance of the t-shirt was. Sometimes I just take what I'm given and don't ask too many questions.

After we finished with the yellow photos, she started rummaging through some of my clothing racks and pulled out a large black tulle crinoline. She started playing with it in front of a mirror and I got an idea. I moved a light to my red wall, and told her to stand under it. She began to wrap the tulle around her head and we poked and pulled at it until we created a shape that looked almost like a flower.

We made a few images and ran out the door to make our holiday plans for the evening. The next day when I had a chance to go through the images, I realized that even in that rushed moment, we created something original and beautiful.

I'm not sure what even happened with the yellow t-shirt photograph. I hope the band liked it. All I know is that during a hectic time of year, I had a moment to capture a moment that literally came out of nowhere.
_________

Welcome to the January Billy Sheahan Photography email postcard.

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

Each current month's photograph is available during that month for the special monthly price of $25, and all previous month's photos are available at the regular price of $40.

Click here to view the postcard photograph sale page.

Traditional monthly postcards, signed on the front and back and mailed to your postal address are also available for $25 for 12 months. You can purchase a 12 month postcard subscription or larger prints of my photography here.

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.


You can see more of my photography at the all new 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

A new chance to learn

I found our this week that my photography portfolio has been accepted to attend a week long seminar at Santa Fe Photography Workshops next month. I feel like I've reached a point with my work where I need to reevaluate what I'm doing photographically.

Last fall I made a decision to stop shooting my personal work for a while to recharge and decide what is next. It was a painful decision to make, but I think necessary. The book I'm currently writing is one way I'm exploring why I stopped and what that all means.

I attended a two-day photography seminar last October, shortly after I decided to put my personal art on hold. It was a bit odd to experience such an immersion of lectures on a wide variety of topics, and at the end of it, I won a Santa Fe Workshop. Something was telling me, it was okay to take a little break, but I wasn't done yet.

I'll be studying with a remarkable photographer called Doug Menuez. His story is incredibly inspiring, and the opportunity to spend a week with him will be a gift on so many levels. I'll be pretty much cut off from the world while I'm there. No internet. No television. Perfect. I expect I'll find some piece of what I'm looking for there.

I'll go with an open mind, and no expectations, except that I know when I travel like this, I do find clarity of vision. Something I'm in need of these days.

Other than that, life has been more peaceful and happy than I can remember in a long time. I've eliminated a few things that were causing drama, a little bit of pruning that I think is necessary from time to time. Sometimes things you think you can't live without are exactly the things that are holding you back from moving forward.

I feel good about 2008 so far. Lots on the horizon. Lots of new projects and people. New things to experience in ways I haven't before. I can't wait to get started.

Good reviews

Work on my book continues. It's going very well. I sent the first three chapters out to a few writer friends and the response was incredible. At least I don't have to worry about what I'm going to put on the back jacket cover.

Some samples...

"So, so brave, and beautifully written... so articulate and self-aware."

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"The honesty combined with the writing style is wonderful... this reads beautifully."

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"It's beautifully written, evocative and relentlessly honest. It also makes me remember why, aside from the biological imperative, I like women so much. Obviously you do too, which is why you make such good pictures."

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"Oh my, what a gift it was to read it. Your writing style is so simple, so concise and straightforward that it mirrors your photography in some respects i.e., on the surface it just is what it is, yet there is a lingering, a pause, in your writing (and photography) that calls the pilgrim back not to observe but to participate, an invitation to explore and your work evokes from me memories and emotions that may or may not have anything to do with what your photography or writing set out to accomplish or capture - - but only because of it or through it can I find that place where it becomes the "Ah Ha". Now, that's just a gift. A mystery. It's spiritual, that downright "soul-schtuff" that a Jesuit could journey to the Vatican and back and never encounter."

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I guess that means I should continue with this! Every time I have writers block, I'll just read those very kind comments for inspiration.

This is a photograph I took in the Hollywood Hills about 1996. I was shooting a friend of mine who was house sitting a gorgeous home, and I found this typewriter on a patio bench. I didn't touch anything. That's just how I found it.

Warm writing weather

Well, Chicago is experiencing an amazing warm snap, at least for the next few days. Temperatures could reach 60 tomorrow. Absolutely amazing!

I had a couple of great walks this weekend, running errands, enjoying the weather and even found time to write a few more chapters in my book. I think it's going to be a good one.

Feedback from a couple of writers I've given a preview to have been extremely positive. I now have outlines for 12 chapters and there will be more to come.

It's already been quite a journey of personal introspection. Where I've been and where I'm going. I don't know how it's going to end, but I'm anxious to find out.

Writing elsewhere

It's been a while since I've written anything here, but that doesn't mean I haven't been writing. I was having lunch with a producer friend of mine the other day and we were trading stories and after I finished one of my recent tales, he paused for a minute and said, "You really need to write a book about all of this. This would make such a great scene from a movie!" He does have a Hollywood connection. So who knows.

And so that's what I've been doing. I always knew I would publish a photography book at some point, but I thought it would be more pictures than words. I'll probably still do that in the near future, but I think this particular one is going to be more words than photographs. We talked about it some more and it seemed like it would be interesting to use my photographs as a jumping off point for the personal stories I'm writing.

I'll probably keep the text to myself for a while, at least not here anyway, but the opening paragraph has been getting rave reviews from a few people I've shared it with. Compelling I'm told. That's a pretty nice tease, right?

When I'm not writing, I've been scanning a lot of negatives lately, discovering some new images that I've overlooked in the last decade or so, and it's been nice to relive some of those moments. This one is a self portrait I took while I was in Berlin in the mid-90s attending a film festival that one of my films was being featured in. I'm standing in front of the theater where it played... with a lot more hair than I have now.

Funny to look back and think about what I was up to back then. I believe I just had 12 stitches removed from my head after I was mugged in Chicago, just a few days before I was heading to Germany. The doctor who stitched me up did something a little out of the ordinary when I told him I was going to be in Europe when the stitches were due to come out. He slipped me a suture removal kit to take with me, and before we went out one evening, a friend I was traveling with took out my stitches in our hotel room. She did a good job. Steady hand, she had.