Billy Sheahan February 2008 Postcard

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

People ask me all the time if I've switched to shooting only digital. I always say that I'm shooting a lot of digital, but there is still something about film I love. If I have a good thing going on a shoot, I make sure to capture a bit of it using one of my beloved film cameras. There's something about how light hits the film that is different than light hitting an electronic chip.

One of my oldest cameras is a Kodak Stereo Camera from the late 1950s. When Frances and I were shooting the Black Pond Series last summer with my Canon 5D digital camera, I could tell we were making some great photographs and I decided to shoot a roll with the stereo camera. What you see here is one of the resulting pair of images.

In order to see the 3D image, it takes a little practice. Stare at the pair of images, cross your eyes until you see three images and concentrate on the middle one. Don't do it for too long or you'll get a headache. But if you do it right, Frances will look like she's crawling out of the pond at you!

I love how current technology has changed how I create images, but I've never give up creating on film either. I like keeping one foot in the present and one foot in the rich past of creating photographs.

_________

Welcome to the February 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

Better early than never

Funny story. Today I'm driving up from Albuquerque, New Mexico up to the mountains in Santa Fe, going over my itinerary, when I realize I'm here a day early. Not sure how I managed to do that, but my workshop doesn't begin until tomorrow and here I am.

It's even funnier because I haven't really slept since Wednesday night, as I've been frantically trying to fill a couple of photography orders (thank you) and getting a new portfolio ready for the workshop. Pretty much busting my ass to get everything done in time, and I actually had an extra day.

I decided to pull an all nighter on Thursday night retouching and printing. Friday I delivered six large beautiful pieces to one of my clients who insisted on taking me out to a lovely dinner and several bottles of wine, when what I really needed was sleep. So by the time I got home and packed for my 7am departure the next morning, it was 2am, and so the sleep I was desperately looking forward to wasn't to be.

Mark and Melissa, who continue to be the most amazing friends and had insisted on driving me to the airport, arrived smiling and happy to see me even though the hour was a bit ridiculous. When I asked why they had chosen to drive me, Mark simply reminded me of all the people I had driven to the airport at ungodly hours and... well... he was right.

So when I realized on the way to Santa Fe I was a day early, I had to call him and tell him of my ironic confusion. We had a good laugh and since I had nowhere to stay tonight since my room at the school wouldn't be ready until tomorrow, he looked up a little place he and Melissa had stayed when they were here.

I called and made a reservation at Las Palomas, a charming little place and was booked into a beautiful little pueblo style room. I've had apartments smaller than this place. I have a kitchen, living room, bedroom and full bath. Oh and a fireplace. Nice.

I dropped off my bags and headed out, in need of a little exploring and some dinner. I walked down San Francisco towards the plaza. I saw a few places to eat that looked promising, but decided to keep walking until I came upon a little alley with a sign with a picture of the Eiffel Tower on it. Café Paris. Well. You know me. I walked down the alley and found the beautiful little café and walked in to the sounds of live accordion music.

I was originally just going to get a coffee and a sandwich, but this was too good to hurry through. Before I knew it, I was sitting at a lovely little table and John, who seemed to be the manager, came over to my table and ran through the specials. Without even opening the menu, I said it sounded perfect. He walked away smiling and looked over his shoulder and quietly whispered "Can you teach everyone to be such an easy dinner guest?"

He returned with a glass of wine and I settled in with my book and enjoyed a few hours of relaxed dining, listening to the accordion performance that included my favorites, La Vie en Rose, La Mer, Padam Padam and even the Theme from The Third Man.

I've been reading Wonderful Tonight, an autobiography by Pattie Boyd, the 60's model and wife of both George Harrison and Eric Clapton, though not at the same time. One of my friends recommended the book after reading a few chapters of my own book, saying her stories of modeling reminded him of some of my passages.

It's funny how things work out though. I really wanted to get to Santa Fe fresh, and I was afraid with the travel and driving I would be anything but. Yet somehow, here I was enjoying a delicious meal and wine and reading my book, listening to the music. I'm not sure how I could have been any more relaxed.

I walked back to my little home for the night, enjoying the clear sky and the stars. It will be good to finally get that good night sleep I've been dreaming about.

Aperture to Lightroom

*** Nerd Alert ***

This blog entry will probably be of little interest to most people who read my blog, but, for those photographers who, like me, are using Apple's Aperture and Abobe's Lightroom, this may be of interest.

This past week, Apple released the long awaited version of Aperture 2.0. I was an early adopter of Aperture, pretty much the day it came out. I loved the idea of what it provided me in terms of a powerful database and editing application. Soon afterwards, Adobe introduced a public beta of Lightroom. And the battle began.

To make a long story short, after more than a year of using Aperture, I decided to migrate 50,000 photographs to Lightroom. It was a painful decision and lengthy process to move my photographs from Aperture's library package to Lightroom.

However, one of the things that made it easier was a little AppleScript that I had a programmer friend write for me and I have decided to post it for those who, like me, have decided that Lightroom is the way to go.

The script basically looks inside your Aperture library package and creates symbolic links of your entire library, or individual projects, depending on where you point the script. It doesn't bring over any of your RAW enhancements/corrections or anything like that. It's simply designed to make it easy to extract your photos from the Aperture library package and get them into Lightroom without having to drill down through hundreds of folders. This script looks for Canon and Nikon RAW files, PSDs, TIFFs, and JPGs and creates symbolic links (aliases) to the original files in a new single folder. You can then use Lightroom's import command to move or copy (copy is probably safer, especially if you want to retain your Aperture library) your photographs into Lightroom.


*** The Legal Disclaimer ***

Always back up your photographs before attempting something like this. I make no guarantees or assurances if you choose to use this script and I am not responsible if you use it incorrectly and you have any data loss. Only that it saved me hundred of hours of migrating an enormous Aperture library. Use this script at your own risk. Experiment with a test project before extracting your entire Aperture library.

Here is a link to the Aperture Extracter script.

I hope some of you find this as useful as I did.

I may yet continue to use Aperture 2.0 for some of it's features in limited capacity, but I continue to be a very happy and satisfied Lightroom user these days.

Yes We Can! - - - Vote Tomorrow!

Tomorrow is Super Tuesday. The day that more than half of the country can finally vote to move our country in a new direction.

Please vote. Righting the wrongs begins TOMORROW!

Stock footage for CNN

My friend Jill used to have a saying. When she lived here in Chicago, inevitably during some winter storm, we'd be walking, hunched over, trying to avoid the horizontal snow and blinding wind. And she'd look over at me and say, "I'm so tired of being stock weather footage for CNN."

"And here's what it looked like in Chicago today as a brutal winter storm...."

Jill moved to California, and then to Nashville. I don't think she'll have to worry about being stock footage anymore.

Me however, still here. Yeah we've had our share of snow this winter already. Just last week I was walking outside one afternoon, enjoying a rare 50 degree day in January, but six hours later my friend Yvette and I were doing that same hunched over walk through a vicious snow storm and single digit temperatures. What gives?

I'm looking out the window again tonight at yet another snowstorm.

It's silly to complain about it. I mean really. Do we think we're going to ever get a pass on winter here. Not so much.

But I think it's taking a bit more of a toll on us this year because we're starting to drop like flies around here. Lots of people I know are sick or getting sick. I got nailed with the three day flu this week that has finally dissipated into a horrible sounding cough, but at least I can finally get out of bed.

To look on the bright side of things (and end on more of an up note), the days are getting longer every day. We're into February so things are only going to get better. We've heard George Bush's last State of the Union address. And a bunch of us get to vote for our next President in two days.

Yes, things are rather looking up.