Everyone has a concert that changes them. Mine was seeing The Cranberries in Granada in 2002. I was in the crowd, without a camera, and I remember thinking: someone has to be telling this story. Twenty years later, that someone wanted to be me.
From the crowd to the pit
I have spent most of my life watching concerts from behind the barrier. Springsteen, Sting, Jamiroquai, Supertramp, Bob Dylan. I collected nights the way others collect records. Always with a camera in my hand, but from the crowd, without access, learning to photograph what I saw.
Portraiture taught me the rest. Years photographing people gave me something you do not learn from a manual: knowing how to wait for the moment. Live music is the same, only faster. The light changes every second, the band does not pose and the moment never repeats.
The first time in the pit
The first time I crossed to the other side of the barrier was a small festival. I remember the vertigo of being in front of the stage with the camera, with no crowd between the band and me. And I remember the feeling of having found my place.
It was not perfect. Lots of out-of-focus photos, lights I could not control, exposure dancing around. But there were three or four images that did have something. Those are the ones that made me keep going.
What I have learned
Concert photography is not about the camera. It is about knowing the music, about knowing when something is going to happen before it happens. Reading the artist, anticipating the moment the guitar rises or the voice breaks.
It is also about respect. You are in the space of the artist and the audience. You do not get in the way, you do not use flash, you do not interrupt. The best photo is the one nobody notices was taken.
Why this website
This site was born with a clear idea: I want to tell the live shows of Granada and beyond. I am building my concert portfolio, and every collaboration with a venue, a band or a festival adds a page to this story.
If you play in a small venue, if you produce a festival, if you are a band that wants photos of your next show: let us talk. The first live shows are photographed with more passion than any others.
