People ask me this a lot. Why concerts? Why not weddings, or portraits, or landscapes? The money's better in almost all of those.

Honestly? Because nothing else gives me the same feeling. There's a version of photography that's controlled — you set the light, you pose the subject, you take 200 frames of the same thing and pick the best one. That's valid work and I respect it. But it's not what makes me pick up a camera.

Live music is the opposite of control. You can't ask the artist to do that thing again. You can't move the spotlight. You get one chance at every moment, and most of them you'll miss. But when you don't miss — when the light, the expression, the movement, and the energy all collide in a single frame — there is nothing like it.

I shoot concerts because it's the closest photography gets to being in the moment instead of observing it. The bass hits your chest, someone's elbow is in your back, the flash from the stage blinds you for half a second, and somewhere in there you press the shutter and hope. That's it. That's the whole thing.