Seattle Photographer Daniel Sheehan

It has been a while since I made a portrait of Ema and she looks quite different from the last time. We were out on a boat in Lake Union and I made some like the one below, of Ema with her sister Claire and friend Yasmina visiting from Europe. Then Ema went down below to the cabin and I shot this one of her in the shade.

They grow up so fast. I should be shooting them more often.

Portrait Photography by Seattle photographer Daniel Sheehan creating portraits for publications and a Seattle Wedding Photographer with an artistic photojournalist style.

This video by John Kelly helps me to put off what I really need to be doing right now.

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.”

Nina has photographed something we all need to be aware of especially here in the Pacific Northwest.

British Columbia is in the midst of a mountain pine beetle epidemic with millions of trees dying from the pine beetle infestation. Nina Berman narrates her portfolio of images from her Consequences by NOOR climate change project, British Columbia l Pine Beetles

Since 1990, more than 36 million acres of pine forests in British Columbia have been decimated by the mountain pine beetle. Experts predict that by 2014 at least 80 percent of the pines in British Columbia will be dead. No larger than a grain of rice, the pine beetle is endemic in Rocky Mountains of western North American. Winter temperatures below minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit once kept the beetle in check. Warming trends have permitted the beetle larvae to survive the winter and proliferate at an astounding rate in forests from Mexico to Canada. Mature pine trees, weakened by drought, cannot withstand the onslaught, and as the beetle multiplies, younger trees also are falling prey. Dead trees are fodder for wild fires. The beetle kill has wreaked havoc on the economy of regions dependent upon logging and tourism. Authorities acknowledge that man cannot stop the rampage of the pine beetle. The beetle will eat until it runs out of food or until deeply cold winter temperatures return to kill its larvae. ?I felt,? says Berman, ?like I was seeing a cataclysmic shift in our understanding of what forests look like.

Nina’s portfolio is part of a larger project from Noor.:

From the frontiers of climate change comes Consequences by NOOR. Featuring the work of nine, internationally acclaimed photographers, this exhibition documents the devastating effects of climate change around the globe. These stunning photographs show not what might happen in the future but what is happening today.

The subjects include: a massive pine beetle kill in British Columbia, genocide in Darfur, the rising sea level in the Maldives, Nenet reindeer herders in Siberia, Inuit hunters in Greenland, a looming crisis in Kolkata, India, coal mining in Poland, oil sand extraction in Canada and the deforestation of the Amazon Rainforest by Brazilian cattle ranchers.

Consequences by NOOR premiers at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, December 7 through December 18, 2009.

Consequences by NOOR goes on tour in 2010 and is available for booking. View our PRESS PAGE for information.

A Bella Baby Picture – Walter @ 3 Months -

Although I am not a full time professional baby photographer, I had to make a portrait of  Walter,  the first born child of good friends Laurie and Jason Dix whose wedding I photographed a couple of years ago.  As a professional photographer in addition to corporate and editorial assignment  I also do a fair amount of portrait photography and nothing is more fulfilling than a portrait photography session with a baby.
What a fun and interesting portrait session with baby Walter. He has a great personality which was  so apparent but surprising at such an early age. Laurie, your son was such a fun subject to photograph and what could be more cool than be born with a mohawk haircut. I also really enjoyed the new baby smell of a 3 month old. I had almost forgotten.

I heard this story from the Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie on the danger of depending upon the single story and it hit a nerve. Listen to her on this video from TED.

Apollo 11 Revisited Above, view from Apollo 11 command vehicle “Columbia” of the moon with the earth rising on the horizon.

I find it hard to believe that it is 40 years ago since we first went to the moon. Tomorrow marks the 40th anniversary of the July 16, 1969 launch of Apollo 11, with astronauts Neil A. Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. aboard. The entire trip lasted only 8 days, the time spent on the surface was less than one day, the entire time spent walking on the moon, a mere 2 1/2 hours – but they were surely historic hours. Below are a few of the 40 images that the Boston Globe blog “The Big Picture” has collected from this event and posted. They are amazing to reconsider.

The Saturn V rocket lifts off on July 16th, 1969.

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.

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Here is a funny take on the subject of photographers getting harassed for just taking pictures. It seems to have become a national phenomenon since Sept 11th, 2001 has made everyone more security conscious. To the extreme point of suspecting everyone taking photos in public without regard for common sense.