Condition: Critical | Feature
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Sam Abell
Sam Abell is in Seattle this week conducting a workshop at Art Wolfs place and on Tuesday evening gave a very generous 2 1/2 talk on photography in general and on his new book in particular
His fine, generous, and very personal new book The Life of a Photograph came out last month and it is a natural extension of his earlier book The Life of A Photographer which came out a few years ago.
The new book is about the process of photography. He shows other frames taken before and after some of his favorite pictures, most of them published by NG. There are pairs of picture taken over time; sequences; even failures. Along the way you get a genuine glimpse inside his sensibility, and visual, not theoretical, indications of what it is that makes a Sam Abell picture a Sam Abell. The effect is of a comfortable tour of what it’s like behind one very famous photographer’s eyes.
It is interesting to note that he mentions that the rap against him at the magazine was that his pictures were too quiet. They may be quiet, but there is an intensity and a purity of spirit to all of his images that more than makes up for thier lack of dramatic impact.They reward the patient viewer who spends some time looking at them. Even upon repeated viewing his pictures continue to give pleasure.
In the talk he showed versions of his famous photo of pears on window sill with Red Square in distance, that he took while shooting a story for National Geographic in the early 1980′s at the height of the cold war. He talked about how he made a sequence of pictures and displayed the whole series starting with the first photo he took at 6am when he woke up and then over the course of the day as he continued to shoot as he rearranged the pears and the curtain and the angle of view before arriving at his final famous picture that the magazine used with the story.
Now after almost 30 years have passed he told us that his opinion has changed. Now as he reconsiders his editing decision, his favorite picture is the first one he shot at 6am, not the one made famous from being published in the magazine. The book is really worth the time it takes to go through it. It makes you think.
Seattle photographer Daniel Sheehan, is a photojournalist specializing in jazz photography, photojournalism and portrait photography for publications and corporations. He is also a Seattle wedding photographer with a subtle, unobtrusive, story-telling approach creating award winning wedding photojournalism ranking him among the best Seattle wedding photographers.
Seattle Wedding Photojournalist
The weather just got cold today as we head into fall and I came across this photo that kind of tells the story. I heard on the radio that there would be snow up at Stevens Pass today, and it seems so early in the season. Then I saw this photo from the wedding of Andrea and Derek at the top of Crystal Mountain and I thought it would be a good time to post it. They were married back on June 28th 2000. That right, Andrea was a June Bride but she still got coaught in a snow storm. It snowed all day until just before sunset when the clouds parted and right there as close as your hand in front of your face was Mount Rainier.
Photographs by Seattle Editorial Photographer and Seattle photojournalist Daniel Sheehan. In addition to weddings, Daniel is a Seattle wedding photographer with an unobtrusive, story-telling approach, creating award winning Seattle wedding photography and wedding photojournalism among Seattle wedding photographers. His Seattle wedding photography is created in an artistic, editorial fashion with classic photojournalistic style. 
Bill Cosby Jazz
Bill Cosby sits in with the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra Saturday, November 1, Nordstrom Recital Hall/Benaroya Hall
Bill Cosby was scheduled to appear at Benaroya Hall but before he went on he wandered over to the Nordstrom Recital Hall to visit with his old friend James Moody who was scheduled to appear with the SRJO. It was then that he invited himself to make a surprise guest appearance with the SRJO too. So to the delight of the Orchestra and the audience he came onstage and after a brief consultation began playing Duke Ellington’s “Take The A Train” with very funny interjections.
The Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra is the Northwest’s premier big band jazz ensemble. Founded in 1995, the 17-piece band is made up of the region’s leading jazz instrumentalists, both young and old. Committed to presenting the great works of jazz, the SRJO’s repertoire is drawn from the past 100 years of jazz history, including works by Fletcher Henderson, Charles Mingus, Gil Evans, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Gerry Mulligan, Thad Jones, and of course, Count Basie and Duke Ellington.
Click here for the complete schedule for the rest of the upcoming shows at the 2008 Earshot Jazz Festival
Photograph by Seattle photographer Daniel Sheehan, a photojournalist specializing in jazz photography, photojournalism and portrait photography for publications and corporations. He is also a Seattle wedding photographer with a subtle, unobtrusive, story-telling approach creating award winning wedding photojournalism ranking him among the best Seattle wedding photographers.
William Claxton, Photographer of Cool
Photo: Gray Friedman/ Los Angeles Times
Photojournalist William Claxton died on Sunday at age 80 due to complications from congestive heart failure. He was well known for his iconic pictures of Chet Baker and other musicians as well as celebrities like Steve McQueen and Frank Sinatra.
He is one of the photojournalist I have admired for many years. He inspired me to follow the same road of photography by including jazz musicians as a worthy subject. I love this quote Claxton told jazz writer Don Heckman some years ago.
“For the photographer, the camera is like a jazz musician’s ax. It’s the tool that you would like to be able to ignore, but you have to have it to convey your thoughts and whatever you want to express through it,”
Almost as much as the recordings themselves, the photographs reach into the essence of making music.
“That’s where jazz and photography have always come together for me,” Claxton told Heckman. “They’re alike in their improvisation and their spontaneousness. They happen at the same moment that you’re hearing something and you’re seeing something, and you record it and it’s frozen forever.”
He gained his foremost public recognition for his photographs of jazz performers including Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Mel Torme, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk and Stan Getz. But it was his photographs of Baker that helped teach him the true meaning of the word photogenic.
“I was up all night developing when the face appeared in the developing tray,” Claxton told the Irish Times in 2005. “A tough demeanor and a good physique but an angelic face with pale white skin and, the craziest thing, one tooth missing — he’d been in a fight. I thought, my God, that’s Chet Baker.”
Claxton’s relationship with Baker began in 1951 and he continued to photograph Baker for the next 6 years in an attempt to capture the relationship between artist, instrument and music on film.
From: latimes.com
Forward Looking Life Magazine Cover
Have you seen this Life Magazine cover from October 2004? It was 4 years ago that they ran this. I think it is pretty strange that they must have know even then that these two belonged together.
Posted by Seattle Editorial Photographer and photojournalist Daniel Sheehan, an editorial photographer who specializes in portrait photography and photojournalism for publications and corporations. Daniel is also a Seattle wedding photographer. He does Seattle wedding photography in an artistic, editorial fashion with classic photojournalistic style of a wedding photojournalist. He photographs weddings with a subtle, unobtrusive, story-telling approach and creates artistic documentary photography which ranks among the best of all Seattle wedding photographers.
Jazz Photography
Photographing jazz musicians is one of my favorite editorial subjects. I do a lot of it for Earshot Jazz, a non profit organization that promotes jazz in the Seattle area. Every year for about 3 weeks around the middle of October through the 1st week in November they put on one of the best festivals in the country devoted to jazz. I have been photographing for them since 1997 and they use the photos for their monthly magazine “Earshot Jazz” and for the website and for posters promoting the festival. Here are a couple of photographs from the 2007 Earshot Jazz festival. I have another website called EyeShotJazz devoted just to coverage of jazz photographs. Click on Jazz Photography to go to the EyeShotJazz website.
David Sánchez played with his quartet at the Triple Door last October 25th during the Earshot Jazz Festival 2007.
Here is an excerpt from Earshot Jazz Magazine. “David Sánchez commands a room, infusing his huge tenor-saxophone tone with the musical passion of his native Puerto Rico. Specializing in jazz interpretations of mountainous works by Latin American composers, this Latin Grammy winner and his quartet exude palpable charisma and create music to remember every time.
“Technically, tonally, and creatively, he seems to have it all,” gushes jazz critic Howard Reich. “His sound is never less than plush, his pitch is unerring, his rapid-fire playing is ravishing in its combination
of speed, accuracy, and utter evenness of tone.”
Such ecstatic accolades follow Sánchez wherever he plays. After abandoning early efforts on the conga in favor of the tenor saxophone at age 12, he never looked back. Thanks to the enthusiastic endorsement of saxophonist Paquito D’Rivera, Dizzy Gillespie
invited Sánchez to join the United Nation Orchestra in 1990 and “Live the Future” tour – with South African singer extraordinaire Miriam Makeba – the next year.
Since then, Sánchez has toured and recorded with dozens of other stellar notables and produced sessions for Columbia Records, with which he has enjoyed a lasting relationship as a recording artist. After earning several Latin Grammy nominations, Sánchez released Coral, which took home the “Best Instrumental Album” in 2005. His most ambitiously reverential work to date, Coral documents Sánchez and the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra playing interpretations of masterworks by such Latin American luminaries as Antonio Carlos Jobim, Heitor Villa-Lobos, and Alberto Ginastera.
In his more intimate quartet, Sánchez folds Afro-Cuban rhythms into a mien of late-stage bebop and searing, trigger-happy solos. Newly signed to the resurging Concord Records, he came to Seattle with a growing legend that stands boldly on the cusp a fresh new chapter.
Jackie Terrasson
French pianist Jacky Terrasson has charmed audiences on both sides of the Atlantic since winning the Thelonious Monk International Piano Competition in 1993. Capable of summoning both cascades of fl urrying notes and delicate lullabies, with equal resonance, this burgeoning performer and composer has made his recording home with Blue Note Records since 1994. Terrasson’s newest album, a musical self portrait called Mirror, furthers his growing legend with a series of standards and originals that displays his elastic range as a soloist. But it wasn’t easy. “Musically, I like the fact that the music is entirely in my hands,” he says. “There is a tremendous sense of freedom, but that is precisely where this discipline is also a challenge. The feel, the time, rhythm, harmonies are all coming from one person.” Mirror refl ects both Terrasson’s own emotional palette and a range of musical sources. Quoting the licks from the theme songs of television’s Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood (“Everything Happens to Me”) and The Flintstones (“Juvenile”), the album also features works by Duke Ellington, Carole King, Ray Noble, and others. One of its most moving forays, though, comes in the yearning elegance of “America the Beautiful,” in which the Frenchman’s original vision treats the latent potency of that song’s melodies to newly enriched, robustly playful, and suspiciously reverent heights.
Photograph by Seattle Editorial Photographer and photojournalist Daniel Sheehan an editorial photographer who specializes in portrait photography and photojournalism for publications and corporations.
At night he shoots jazz musicians on assignment for Earshot Jazz. Please respect his work and ask for permission to use any pictures.
Daniel is also a Seattle wedding photographer. He does Seattle wedding photography in an artistic, editorial fashion with classic photojournalistic style. He photographs weddings with a subtle, unobtrusive, story-telling approach and creates artistic documentary wedding photojournalism.
Nachtwey's Wish Revealed
A boy experiencing severe pain from TB meningitis is comforted by his mother at Svay Rieng Provincial Hospital, Svay Rieng, Cambodia. Family members provide much of the personal care at hospitals in the developing world. (© James Nachtwey/VII)
Jim Nachtwey’s TED Prize wish was revealed today along with the powerful photographs and website that the TED organization has helped fund. Nachtwey has used the US$100,000 award from his 2007 TED Prize winnings to concentrate on shooting pictures of and increasing awareness about a form of tuberculosis described as “extremely drug-resistant” and has been given the name XDR-TB. Watch his 3′:43″ video on the site XDRTB.org.
More information from the site: “XDRTB.org is an extraordinary effort to tell the story of extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) and TB through powerful photographs taken by James Nachtwey. XDR-TB, or extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis, is a new and deadly mutation of tuberculosis. Similar in creation to multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) but more extreme in its manifestation, it arises when common tuberculosis goes untreated or standard TB drugs are misused. James’ photographs represent these varying strains. Learn more about TB, MDR-TB and XDR-TB, and learn how you can take action to stop this deadly disease.”
Seattle Editorial Photographer
For my first try at blogging, I thought I would just test the waters and be frank. This blog is all about me. I found this mirror a couple of years ago and made this photo thinking someday it would find a home. Well, this seems to be a good place for it.
I was hoping to find a blog template that would let me use bigger pictures but for now this will have to do.
Welcome to my blog.
Here is another photo I shot recently and thought I would put it out here.
A Blue Angel pilots his jet with extreme precison through the ether over Lake Washington.
The U.S. Navy Blue Angels performed their amazing air show routine again last month at Seattle’s annual Seafair. Photograph by Daniel Sheehan Photography
Editorial portrait photographer Daniel Sheehan, a Pulitzer prize winning Seattle Editorial Photographer and Seattle photojournalist , specializes in people, places and portrait photography. Sought after by advertising, editorial, and corporate clients, Daniel has a unique ability to put people at ease in front of his camera. He creates photographs in both the digital and film mediums for editorial and corporate photography and is comfortable shooting in a studio, on location, or if necessary setting up an impromptu studio at a location. His photography often uses the narrative or story-telling approach. He produces compelling narrative photographs with a distinctive artistic edge.
Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist and Seattle Wedding Photographer Daniel Sheehan at A Beautiful Day Photography, creates wedding photography in an artistic, editorial fashion with classic photojournalistic style. Daniel photographs weddings with a subtle, unobtrusive, story-telling approach and creates artistic wedding photojournalism. He is available to travel for weddings from Vancouver, BC to San Diego and is an international award winning member of the Wedding Photojournalist Association (WPJA).
See his photographs including his specialty, large group wedding panaramas at A Beautiful Day Photography