This year has been...intense so far (to say the least). I am lucky enough to work from home at my day job - where I work at a 900 seat 1878 Theater in the historic town of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. I'm also lucky enough to be able to combine a few of my passions at this job - music and photography.
As a kid, I wanted to be a music teacher. Or in a band. Or on Broadway. Basically, I wanted my life to be music. You could catch me singing anywhere I was, or making noise in high school band or percussion ensemble. I played keys and sang in a band with my buddy Sam in Boston. I was the drum major in our marching band. My formative years were full of music and truly shaped who I am today.
I started to drift away from the idea of music as a career early on in college, and began to focus more on something else I loved: photography. As a kid I had a clear pink 35mm camera and shot rolls and rolls of color film from the drug store (I have boxes full of these prints today). I've always known the significance of photos - digging through boxes of brittle prints of faces that looked like mine but who I'd never met. A glimpse into a world that goes so far beyond myself. I pursued photography in college, which leads me to where I am today (with a lot of tripping into adulthood peppered throughout then and now).
I'm happy to be able to fulfill both dreams in a way that I never thought possible: concert photography. As a part of my job, I get to attend a few shows a month to be there as the staff photographer. There's a world that exists between the stage and the audience, a world where photographers hide in opera boxes and sneak through the pit or tip toe back stage, quietly avoiding the crew and anyone else who makes the show happen. Sweating and dancing and singing along, feeding off of the energy that permeates to your bones.
I miss this dearly.
After months and months of being away from the theater, I thought I'd share some of my favorite photos from past shows that I've had the pleasure to shoot.
Galactic, Trombone Shorty, Robert Cray, Nella, PMAC Jazz Night, John Paul White, Malcolm Gladwell.
Comments