Corporate Portrait Photography | Board of Directors Photograph
In December I was called in by the Seattle Aquarium to photograph their board of directors for the annual report. After my initial scouting trip I re-discovered how much I like the overhead approach to making a large group photograph. Sometimes the backgrounds do not seem to look good or maybe it is hard to arrange such a big group in the time and space required and this approach is a real good solution. Photograph by Seattle Photographer Daniel Sheehan specializing in photojournalism, portraits and photography for publications and corporations.
Twilight Seattle Skyline
Had a recent request for a skyline of Seattle panorama and found this one on file from a couple of years ago. It was after the hour when you can still see a clear glimpse of Mt Rainier in the distance but I still like the balance of architecture and Space Needle to the right. If you look very closely though Mt. Rainier can be seen faintly behind the buildings in the center of the panorama. Queen Anne has a wonderful vista in the evening light. Photograph by Seattle Photographer Daniel Sheehan specializing in photojournalism, portraits and photography for publications and corporations.
Jorn Ake | New York Poet
Monday night the poet Jorn Ake was in town giving a reading from his latest book at The Elliott Bay Book Company in their new Capital Hill location. It was the first time I had visited Seattle’s legendary independent bookstore’s new location and was impressed that they very much kept the spirit of the old bookstore in the translation to Capital Hill. I first met Jorn in Prague where he and his wife Claudia were living and I was visiting with my wife Jana. It was good to see them again.
The New York City-based poet Jorn Ake read from his Blue Lynx Prize-winning new collection, Boys Whistling Like Canaries (Eastern Washington University Press). “Boys Whistling Like Canaries is a collection haunted by the grim history of the 20th century, and by how its legacy continues to so troublesomely endure. Ake tackles the most vexing subjects—among them our current wars, the Holocaust, and Cold War totalitarianism—yet he reckons with them without resorting to bromides, polemics, or the benumbing timidity with so often afflicts the work of American poets when they seek to confront injustice. In his rangy and querulous approach, Ake recalled the work of two of our finest poets of social justice, George Oppen and Thomas McGrath. To be linked with them is no small accomplishment.” – David Wojahn. Jorn Ake’s 2001 debut, Asleep in the Lightning Fields, received the X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize.
Photograph by Seattle Photographer Daniel Sheehan specializing in photojournalism, portraits and photography for publications and corporations.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer
Recently I was working on my archive and I stumbled upon this executive portrait of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer which I shot on assignment for Yahoo Business Magazine. Although he did not give me a ton of time Ballmer was very gracious with me despite what I had heard from others. Coincidently Mocrosoft today announced that driven by Windows 7 sales, their profits grew 35 percent in the 3rd quarter beating all industry analysts estimates. Microsoft had $4.01 billion in profit, or 45 cents a share, on $14.5 billion in sales in the third quarter, which ended March 31. This was an increase of 6 percent compared with the same quarter a year ago, when the company made a profit of $2.98 billion, or 33 cents a share on $13.65 billion in sales.
Ballmer has a long history with the company and joined Microsoft in 1980 and became Microsoft’s 24th employee, the first business manager hired by Bill Gates and was named CEO in January of 2000. Photograph by Seattle Photographer Daniel Sheehan specializing in photojournalism, portraits and photography for publications and corporations, and a wedding photographer, with a candid photojournalist style.
Strawberries
My daughter Claire asked me to photograph this twin strawberry for her. We have been enjoying eating them lately as the price seems to have dropped due to the late crop in Florida coming online the same time as the California crop.
Enjoy the fruits of the season. Photograph by Seattle Photographer Daniel Sheehan specializing in photojournalism, portraits and photography for publications and corporations, and a wedding photographer, with a candid photojournalist style.
Gebhard Ullman
Gebhard Ullman Clarinet Trio
Last week I was assigned to photograph the Gebhard Ullman Clarinet Trio. I was not sure what to expect from a trio of clarinets coming out of Berlin, but I was taken aback by the talents of Gebhard Ullman, Juergen Kupke and Michael Thieke and their music from their opening number as they slowly strolled through the house to the stage, to the finale. An amazing amount of variety from such a tight ensemble of reed players. Their music was swinging and sophisticated and somewhere out there to the mysterious, abstract yet strangely accessible.
From the Earshot Jazz Magazine program notes “Ullmann is a follow-up guy in a world of intermittency. We hear sounds in snippets, music in simple, single song structures, see acts come and go with astonishing speed. Yes, improvisers come up with different ideas constantly, never uttering the same exact thing twice, but the extended suite on Ullmann’s new Ballads and Related Objects comes back again and again to a series of firefly-like blinks, woody auras with sonic embers around the core combustion, as on “Variations on a Theme by Claude Debussy.” But the blinks go to yelps and clarinet shouts, barking that front-ends a chatter of clarinet/alto clarinet/bass clarinet, a recurring intensity.
Ullmann sees his follow-ups more concretely, too: “However I may seem to go in different directions at the same time, I follow up most of the formats for many years. Mostly more than a decade.” He’s right, too, bringing bands back time and again to explore the platform, to survey how the ensemble has grown as individuals. Ballads is the third session from Ullmann, Jurgen Kupke (clarinet), and Michael Thieke (alto clarinet), and as it’s released, Ullmann is also putting out another date with trombone madman, Steve Swell. The simply named Ullmann/Swell 4 spills out News? No News!, a rambunctious blurt of energetic action that records no distance or creative tension between Ullmann, a Berlin transplant who spends most of his time in Europe, and the New Yorker. One could imagine the difference in scenes, Europe more friendly to the avant-garde, North America more occupied by its love for the mainstream, its measuring of art by the yardstick of commerce. But Ullmann resists the characterization: “We are all trying to move forward musically and be able to survive. There is no difference,” he replies when questioned on how we differ on opposite sides of the Atlantic.
As for the Clarinet Trio, Ullmann infuses the music with what qualities he sees in Thieke and Kupke: “They bring in contemporary music, performance, jokes.” He’s emphatic about their musical potency, too: “You never heard a trio like this. It is at times more than a trio almost an orchestra. It is all of my woodwind music.” Like ROVA and the WSQ before them, the Trio does indeed encompass Ullmann’s many interests, his core. “Be it bands like Henry Cow or Can, be it the classical music I grew up with or the contemporary composed music I listened to as a teenager, composers like Lutoslawski, Henze or Stockhausen,” he comments, the woodwind elements didn’t exist. And even as some of Ullmann’s impetus was to “transpose to wind instruments” what he heard in music that did not feature them, he also knows that “minimalistic techniques and techniques using overtones, multiphonics and such [can] give the impression of more than 3 players,” enabling the ensemble to move beyond some of the limitations of the source material. Continue reading here. Jazz Photographer and Seattle photographer Daniel Sheehan covers jazz performances, creates portrait photography for publications and corporations and is a Seattle Wedding Photographer, wedding photography with an artistic photojournalist style.
Water Towers
I have been driving by these water towers for the past few years and they always remind me of Bernd and Hilla Bechers who own the topic. The Bechers first collaborated on photographing and documenting the disappearing German industrial architecture in 1959. They were fascinated by the similar shapes in which certain buildings were designed. In addition, they were intrigued by the fact that so many of these industrial buildings seemed to have been built with a great deal of attention toward design. Together, the Bechers went out with a large format camera and photographed these buildings from a number of different angles, but always with a straightforward “objective” point of view. The images of structures with similar functions were then displayed side by side to invite viewers to compare their forms and designs. These structures included barns, water towers, storage silos, and warehouses. Bernd taught at the Düsseldorf Art Academy and influenced students that later made a name for themselves in the photography industry. Former students of Bernd’s included Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff, and Candida Höfer.
I can not help but think of them when I see such water towers. As much as I wanted to photograph them, I put off shooting them for a long time. But as the Bechers never worked in panoramic format, my image is a divergence in at least one direction. Background on the Bechers from wikipedia. Photograph by Seattle Photographer Daniel Sheehan specializing in photojournalism, portraits and photography for publications and corporations, and a wedding photographer, with a candid photojournalist style.
Teenagers
Here is another shot of Ema and her friends hanging out at the beach at Carkeek Park celebrating her 13th birthday. It was a really fun afternoon and evening with hot dogs chilli and marshmallows and stuff around a bon fire.