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Past
I have had a varied professional and personal background that can only be summed up as a rich and full life. After studying at the University of Iowa, I moved to Chicago and became a securities trader. After two years my friends James Goode, an editor at Playboy, and his partner, Richard Kirkeby, started a magazine in the best city in the world, San Francisco. They offered me a job and I began to work for an alternative news service called Earth News Radio and their partner Earth Magazine.
I later joined the staff of After Dark magazine in advertising and promotions. It was years before they ever printed any of my photos but I met some of the most wonderful and talented artists, photographers, actors and writers. After Dark was a national theatre and dance magazine with some of the first male nude photography in a commercial magazine. It was the era of "HAIR" and "EQUIS" on Broadway, and the trend was to show full frontal nudity. In effect, After Dark was the first gay national magazine covering current events and the arts. The best part is you could leave it on the coffee table and your mother thought it was just a great looking art magazine.
I began professionally freelancing as a photographer at the encouragement from friends Zohn Artman and Kenn Duncan. My freelance work ranged from taking headshots for models and actors, to photographs of store displays, to shots of male nudes.
I later worked as a freelance photographer for Warner, Electra and Atlantic Records. This was an exciting role for me since I got to work with such legends as Bill Cosby, Roberta Flack, Peter Tosh, The Temptations, Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin and ZZ Top.
I left the world of Rock & Roll photography when my assignments started to include bands like AC/DC. Working their concerts was more than a full time job.
I moved on to furniture design and manufacturing when I purchased and restored a wonderful old Victorian home, one of the now famous "Painted Ladies" on San Francisco's "Post Card Row". I needed furniture for the house and friend; Peter Jeal suggested that we could make anything we needed. Along with James Vogeney my partner of 22 years that was the beginning of Shannon & Jeal Fine Furniture. James died in January of 1994.