Last year around this time, I was out at a bar in Seattle having a beer at the High Dive in Fremont, watching “The Buckets”, a local band my friend Michael plays guitar in. When the show was done I headed towards the door and saw these Zombies at a table and photographed them and wondered why they had been let in to the bar dressed like that. Then I hit the streets and it looked like the Zombies had taken over the city. I started taking photos as they walked by. There were thousands of them around. I did make it out of Fremont ok. It turned out that more than 3 thousand people participated that Friday night  in Fremont in an attempt to break the Guinness World Record for most people in a zombie walk.

After the walk the zombies went for a viewing of some outdoor movies, Shaun of the Dead, and playing of Michael Jackson’s Thriller for zombies to dance to. More than a thousand zombies danced to Michael Jackson’s Thriller. The event was scheduled before his death, and so it turned into a tribute to him.

As it turned out, Fremont broke the world’s record for the most zombies in one place with the new official record of 3,894 zombies. Then England stepped in and took away the record. So this Saturday is the second annual Red, White & Dead event. Seattle can then lay claim to the “Zombie Capital of the World” once and for all in the “Dead” Center of the Universe. The goal is to outdo the Brits, who hold the zombie walk Guinness World Record through the Big Chill Music Festival in England. From noon to midnight Saturday at Fremont Outdoor Movies (3501 Phinney Ave. N.), there will be an attempt to beat Guinness Book of Records with most “zombies” in one location. 3,575 are expected. From 5 p.m. to 8 p.m., zombies will dance and walk on sidewalks in Fremont, with North 35th Street closed from Phinney Avenue North to First Avenue NW. his year also marks the “Year of the Zombie” and Seattle seems to be the center of attention, as 2010 marks another first for Seattle with ZomBcon, the world’s first Zombie Culture Convention infecting Seattle on Halloween weekend at the Seattle Center and Experience Music Project with over 100 Exhibitors, 10 interactive fan workshops, panels, a SIFF-curated film series, and Halloween Masquerade , Zombie Prom party. We plan to have a collection of experts, authors, filmmakers, historians, celebrities and all the gear and fan fare for the Quintessential Zombie fan. Here are some pictures from last years zombie walk.

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Editorial photography by Seattle photographer Daniel Sheehan, who shoots corporate and editorial photography and portraits for publications and Seattle Wedding Photography with an artistic photojournalist style.

I just found out that the July/August issue of  Seattle Homes & Lifestyles Magazine is running my architectural photography of the Madrona Modern home I photographed for Seattle interior designer Robin Chell of Robin Chell Design and  architects David Bennett and Kim Lavacot of Bennett Lavacot Architecture. In fact they have chosen the above picture for the cover of the magazine. It was a beautiful and sophisticated house to photograph with a quiet, simple elegance. Read the story here: Seattle Homes & Lifestyles

Architectural photography by Seattle photographer Daniel Sheehan, who creates architectural photography and portrait photography for publications and Seattle Wedding Photography with an artistic photojournalist style.

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.

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.

I was in San Francisco recently for a wedding and from my hotel, and I noticed that they have set up an ice skating rink next to the “Vaillancourt Fountain” at Justin Herman Plaza (created by Quebec-born sculptor Armand Vaillancourt) not far from the Ferry Building on Market.
on The Embarcadero at Market Street.

It was full of skaters that sunny but cool Sunday afternoon. Its funny, I never would have thought that ice skating was something people did outside in San Francisco on a sunny afternoon. Photograph by Daniel Sheehan, a Seattle photographer who specializes in people and portraits and travels everywhere to shoot weddings in a photojournalist style. Daniel was named among the best wedding photographers by the Wedding Photojournalists Association.

All photographs on this website are by Daniel Sheehan © 2010. All Rights Reserved. Please inquire for permission to use.

Jürgen Moltmann, a German Protestant theologian, was in Seattle for a talk, not long ago and I was assigned by Seattle Pacific University to photograph him for their alumni publication Response. He was very interesting to photograph and I enjoyed hearing him speak about his book Theology of Hope.

His liberation theology is also interesting as it includes an understanding of both the oppressed and the oppressor as needing reconciliation. “Oppression has two sides: on one side there is the master, on the other side the slave… Oppression destroys humanity on both sides.”

Photograph by Daniel Sheehan, a Seattle photographer who specializes in people and portraits and travels everywhere to shoot weddings in a photojournalist style that is real, straightforward, subtle and unobtrusive. Daniel was named among the best wedding photographers by the Wedding Photojournalists Association.

All photographs on this website are by Daniel Sheehan © 2010. All Rights Reserved. Please inquire for permission to use.

Emperor Akihito of Japan

I was going through some old files and I came across some photos I forgot I had taken. In 1994 on a news assignment, I photographed Emperor Akihito of Japan who was on a visit to New York. It was at a reception at the Metropolitan Museum of New York and all of the New York social and political elites came out to meet him. It was an interesting evening to witness. Here the Emperor was applauding a toast New York Governor Mario Coumo has made I believe. Akihito is the current Emperor of Japan, and the 125th Emperor according to Japan’s traditional order of succession. He acceded to the throne in 1989, and is the 20th most senior monarch or lifelong leader. He is the world’s only reigning monarch whose title is customarily translated into English as “Emperor”.. Photographs on this website by Seattle photographer Daniel Sheehan © 2010. All Rights Reserved. Please inquire for permission before using. In addition to editorial and corporate assignments, Daniel is also a wedding photographer and was named the best wedding photographers in Seattle by the Wedding Photojournalists Association.

The Charles Lloyd New Quartet with Jason Moran, Reuben Rogers, & Eric Harland playing at Town Hall.

All Photographs on this website Daniel Sheehan © 2009. All Rights Reserved. Please inquire for permission before using.

It was a beautiful new group Charles Lloyd brought to town earlier this month. I have been meaning to post some photos from this performance and here they are. If you missed the show it was a wonderful performance. Charles is one of my all time favorite musicians. And so is Jason Moran. I was happy to get the chance to hear Eric Harland and Reuben Rogers play as well.

These cats were very intense and yet the music was very spiritual.

“Since the 1960s, tenor saxophonist and flautist Charles Lloyd’s life has alternated between periods of musical and personal exploration. After spending a decade or so working as a sideman in different blues and jazz groups, Lloyd hit a goldmine of critical acclaim and popular support in with his quartet’s groundbreaking performance at the 1966 Monterey Jazz Festival (no small feat in a period when jazz’s audiences were largely moving in new directions). This particular group was notable not just for Lloyd’s debut as a fresh and exciting leader, but also because two of its members, Keith Jarrett and Jack DeJohnette, were themselves only a few years away from exploding as widely innovative and influential jazz musicians….

Lloyd’s New Quartet is fortified with relatively young but well-established jazz musicians who are fully capable of sharing Lloyd’s pursuits. A leader in his own right, Jason Moran (piano) brings the group a unique, mature second lead voice. He’s one of those pianists who sometimes convince you that you’re listening to 80 years of jazz piano history rolled into one set of fingers. His heavy left hand will dabble in vintage 1920s stride playing right before flowing through a sequence that breaks into advanced Andrew Hill territory, while his frank, direct solos often develop in unpredictable turns that take full advantage his repertoire’s diverse influences.

On stage, when Lloyd himself isn’t soloing, he doesn’t just stand there; he frequently can’t resist dancing to the pulsing, breathing rhythms provided by his fellow musicians. Reuben Rogers (bass) and Eric Harland (drums/percussion) form a reliable, gregarious backbone that’s perfect for bringing the exotic structures in Lloyd’s compositions to life. Whether the tune is funky, swinging, Latin, or has no definable rhythm at all, the team decorates it with outbursts that always feel natural and appropriate….” – Nathan Bluford from the Earshot Jazz program guide. Jazz Photography by editorial photographer and photojournalist Daniel Sheehan who covers jazz performances, and creates portrait photography for publications and corporations. He is also a Seattle Wedding Photographer at A Beautiful Day Photography, a wedding photographer with an artistic photojournalist style.