Seattle Photographer

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.

I was assigned to make an environmental portrait of Seattle real estate agent Jan Sewell who also runs a successful staging business for other real estate agents recently for a magazine piece about her beautiful home in Madison Park. Her place is like a museum with incredible art on all the walls and sculpture scattered all around the place. She does decorate homes for a living after all, so it is no surprise her place is drop dead gorgeous. Making a portrait of her was more of a challenge as she like a fair number of people do not like to have their picture made. I can not tell you how many times I hear from subjects the” I can’t take a good picture.” and I respond that not to worry, I would be taking the pictures and they should just relax. That is what Jan did and all involved were happy with the results.

Editorial Photography by Seattle photographer Daniel Sheehan who specializes in people, portraits, andplaces. SEATTLE EDITORIAL PHOTOGRAPHER Daniel Sheehan shoots assignments in a photojournalistic style that is real, straightforward, subtle and unobtrusive.

This is Seattle photographer Daniel Sheehan’s photo of Larry Ochs that the Guardian (UK) used without permission and without a photo credit on their website with an article headlined “Spanish fan calls police over saxophone band who were just not jazzy enough” All Photographs on this website Daniel Sheehan © 2009. All Rights Reserved. Please inquire for permission before using.

After discovering their unauthorized use a day or so afterwards I wrote to their music editor at music.editor@guardianunlimited.co.uk but he has not yet seen fit to respond. I am now pondering what my next move will be. UPDATE: I have received word from the Guardian that they are sorry they used the photo without permission and offered payment and then some for for their use.

Click on jazz photography to see the original blog post on my jazz photography website eyeshotjazz where the photo was first posted last year.

Here is their story:

“Jazzman Larry Ochs has seen many things during 40 years playing his saxophone around the world but, until this week, nobody had ever called the police on him. That changed on Monday night however, when’s Spain’s pistol-carrying Civil Guard police force descended on the Sigüenza Jazz festival to investigate allegations that Ochs’s music was not, well, jazz.

Police decided to investigate after an angry jazz buff complained that the Larry Ochs Sax and Drumming Core group was on the wrong side of a line dividing jazz from contemporary music. The jazz purist claimed his doctor had warned it was “psychologically inadvisable” for him to listen to anything that could be mistaken for mere contemporary music.

According to a report in El País newspaper yesterday, the khaki-clad police officers listened to the saxophone-playing and drumming coming from the festival stage before agreeing that the purist might, indeed, have a case. His complaint against the organisers, who refused to return his money, was duly registered and will be passed on to a judge.

“The gentleman said this was not jazz and that he wanted his money back,” said the festival director, Ricardo Checa. ”He didn’t get his money. After all, he knew exactly what group he was going to see, as their names were on the festival programme. He added: “The question of what constitutes jazz and what does not is obviously a subjective one, but not everything is New Orleans funeral music.”

“Larry Ochs plays contemporary, creative jazz. He is a fine musician and very well-renowned.” ”I thought I had seen it all,” Ochs, who reportedly suffered a momentary identity crisis, told El País. “I was obviously mistaken.” ”After this I will at least have a story to tell my grandchildren,” the California-based saxophonist added.”

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.

So a little more on Robert Frank’s influential book “The Americans”.

Looking In: Robert Frank’s ‘The Americans’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through Jan, 3, 2010.

Frank shot 767 rolls of film on his 10,000 mile road trip across America in the mid 1950’s, a total of 27,612 individual shots in total. He then edited it down and made over 1,000 work prints of different images and after 2 years finally selected the 83 images that actually were printed in the book. Editing is so important and perhaps the hardest skill for a photographer to learn. How to edit your own work. I hope to make it to NY to see this exhibit before it comes down. There is an interesting review of the Frank exhibit at the Met in the Wall Street Journal.

Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans” celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The Americans, Robert Frank’s influential suite of black-and-white photographs made on a cross-country road trip in 1955–56.

“In the first room at the Met is a wall of about 80 work prints, most of which have never been exhibited before. They were at one time candidates for “The Americans,” and most were edited out over the two years he spent on the winnowing process.

Almost every one of these outtakes is wonderful—and these are only a sample of the 1,000 work prints he made, themselves a tiny fraction of the rough diamonds still buried in the contact sheets. Many photographers would feel lucky in a lifetime to have captured a handful of the images that Mr. Frank rejected.

Why he chose to publish one picture over another will have many of us studying the excellent essays in the catalog to gain a better hold on his reasoning. Everything was sacrificed to the flow across pages and the four sections of the book. The icon of riders looking at us from a New Orleans trolley car is followed by another frieze-like composition of busy pedestrians on Canal Street moving in apparent isolation.”

City Hall, Reno, Nevada, 1956

My friend Jason Eskenazi wrote me with a request.
Dear Dan,

As you know I worked at the MET for almost 2 years as a security guard. In the last months I guarded the Robert Frank show almost everyday. Ive been asking famed photogs what photo of the 83 images in the Americans really does it for them or that they can say they were ‘born’ out of, is their hands down favorite. I’m trying to get 83 photographers to respond to this survey question.

I finally quit and Im on my to Turkey.

Hope all is well.

JE

He presented me with a dilemma. I went back to the book and went through it again through all 83 images evaluating my emotions and thoughts.

I responded to him with these thoughts.

WAYNE HORVITZ: THESE HILLS OF GLORY

Soloist Carla Kihlstedt (violin) and the Odeonquartet, a world-renowned chamber group featuring Seattle Symphony musicians, perform Wayne Horvitz’s new chamber-music work, These Hills of Glory

The Earshot Jazz Festival is in it’s final week and so I am looking forward to staying home in the evenings starting next week for a least a little while. It has been a lot of fun covering the festival. I have seen and heard a lot of different styles of mostly jazz being played but the music of Wayne Horvitz was something very special.

Pianist Cristina Valdes performs the world premier of Wayne Horvitz’s For Piano Alone in Four Parts

The Odeon Quartet consisting of Gennady Fillmonov, violin, Artur Girsky,violin, Heather Bentley, viola, and Helene Ferret, cello, perform the world premier of Robin Holcomb’s Carry Over

Wayne Horvitz joins the Odeon Quartet and Carla Kihistedt on stage at the end of the performance of These Hills of Glory

Kenneth Jarecke has a photo essay on the Montana State Fair and his thoughts on the comparison between cowboys and photojournalists up on the New York Times photo blog  Lens. Some of the comments after the essay are a good read on the subject too.

“While watching the 4-H youngsters going about their business at MontanaFair in Billings this month, I was struck by a parallel. Here I am in 2009, at a fair ground: a photojournalist, making pictures of cowboys in every direction I look. Don’t any of us know that none of us are supposed to exist?…
[...]The publishing industry is suffering through its killing winter right now. Many of the big outfits I’ve worked for in the past won’t survive. That doesn’t mean photojournalism will disappear, it just means that we’ll have to pay for it a different way. As more publications use the McDonald’s philosophy of giving away the hamburger and making money on the fries and soda — but then failing to charge for any of it — photojournalists will have to create a new market for their work.
[...]Professional photojournalists have only their eye, their experience and their work ethic to create lasting images. It has nothing to do with what kind of lariat they’re carrying.
[...] if you can’t make a great picture in your own backyard, it isn’t going to happen anywhere else.”

Ken has an extended edit of the photoessay back on his own website here.

Blue Angel pilots fly in a tight formation over Lake Washington on a hot summer day. The U.S. Navy Blue Angels are back in Seattle again  performing their amazing air show routine in conjunction with Seattle’s annual Seafair celebrations. Some of their movements are astonishing to watch.

Photographs by Seattle Photographer Daniel Sheehan specializing in photojournalism, portraits for publications and corporations, and photojournalistic Seattle wedding photography.

As Michael Jackson’s memorial service is being held in L.A. as I write, I felt moved to go to the files and pull up an old negative from the time I got to see him perform and photograph him. We were all so much younger, and his music was a dominant note on the soundtrack of our lives. He was everywhere on the radio and MTV. It is almost incredible to remember how really big he was then. Seeing him and photographing him on assignment was a big deal. He was a major force and influence in popular music.

Michael Jackson performed at the Gator Bowl Stadium in Jacksonville Florida before 45,000 people for each night for three nights July 21st, 22nd, 23rd, 1984. I was there on July 23rd on assignment to photograph him for the Black Star Photo agency. It was a big news story everywhere Michael went.

He was on his Victory tour at the top of his game. He performed with his brothers Jackie, Jermaine, Tito, Marlon, and Randy. The tour reunited all Jackson brothers including Michael, who had just released the highly successful Thriller album in 1982, two years previous to the tour, and Jermaine, who had not recorded or toured with his brothers since they left Motown in 1975. The Jacksons’ Victory Tour was the group’s final concert tour of the United States and Canada.

The tour commenced on 6 July in Kansas City and concluded on 9 December in Los Angeles. The tour consisted of 55 concerts to approximately 2 million fans. It was named after the newly released Jacksons’ album Victory although none of the songs from that album were on the tour’s set list.
The set list consisted of songs from the Jacksons albums Destiny and Triumph, but not the Victory album. There were also songs on the list from Jermaine’s and Michael’s solo careers. Michael’s albums Off The Wall and Thriller were both represented.
Here is the set list.
“Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’”
“Things I Do for You”
“Off the Wall”
“Human Nature” (with “Ben” introduction)
“This Place Hotel”
“She’s out of My Life”
“Let’s Get Serious”
“You Like Me Don’t You”
“Tell Me I’m Not Dreamin’ (Too Good to Be True)” (duet with Michael Jackson)
Jackson 5 Medley: “I Want You Back” / “The Love You Save” / “I’ll Be There”
“Rock with You”
“Lovely One”
Interlude
“Workin’ Day and Night”
“Beat It”
“Billie Jean”
“Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)”

The tour reportedly grossed $75 million and set a new record for the then-largest grossing tour. Michael Jackson donated all of his proceeds ($5 million) from the tour to three charities, including the T.J. Martell Foundation for Leukemia and Cancer Research, The United Negro College Fund, and the Ronald McDonald Camp for Good Times.

There was one other reason for the concert to be memorable. They rounded up all of the photographers and video folks and put us in a fenced in area about 40-50 yards away from the stage.
Normally covering a concert the press would shoot from a spot just in front of the stage, so it was a little dismaying to find out how far way we were to be. A 600mm lens with an extender was kind of the only way to get a decent sized image at theses shows. We were all a little miffed. Dennis Hamilton of the Florida times Union newspaper brought along a bag of white gloves which we put on and posed for this photo below. Dennis is in the top row center and I am just to his right. Carol Guzy, three time Pulitzer prize winning photographer at the Washington Post, is third from left. Will Dickey of the Florida Times Union is to the right of her. And down in front is Tom Burton from the Orlando Sentinel. Just to the right of Tom is Don Dughi, of UPI. and with the gloved hand sticking out, is John Coffeen of the Tampa Tribune. Can not recall who every one else is. If you recognize them let me know in the comments. I was just reminded of the pyscho Public Relations woman who kept shouting at us to point our camera at the ground after we shot some photos. We were only allowed to shoot a couple of songs as I remember it.