I'm honored to have been nominated by a few people to the Dallas Observer as one of Dallas' current "best" music photographers, and even more honored that I was selected as one of the 12 Finalists. It has been a real treat meeting the other photographers, some of whom I already knew and admired, the remainder of which have been happy--and in some cases inspirational--discoveries.
The finalists include:
They're publishing profiles of each photographer on the Observers' DC9 At Night music blog. I'll edit or repost this entry to include the profiles as they become available. In the mean time II encourage you to go check out everybody's stuff.
Journalist and Brookhaven College instructor Daniel Rodrigue also invited us for an early-morning panel for some of the photography and/or journalism classes on Monday 3/17, Almost everyone made it, and it was a real opportunity to share some thoughts and learn some stuff. They shared thoughts, and I learned stuff.
Meanwhile I encourage you to also check out some other great shooters who, for whatever reasons, didn't make the list. I can think of a few musician photographers: Barry Kooda, Mike Daane, Luna Matto, Paul Quigg, Manya Repkinova. And no musician/soundman shoots more (including stuff for Central Track) than David Wilson. Melissa Hennings is a fantastic shooters, when she can get out from behind the bar at the Kessler, and Jeffrey Liles has been known tp shoot some cool stuff there too. Alexandra Olivia shoots stuff for Pegasus…I could go on and on...
Two more people to check out, although they're no longer terribly active in music/concert photography, are two of my mentors: Chris Howell and Denny Doran. I trailed them around Deep Ellum in the mid-90's and shot loads of hand-loaded canisters of Tri-X and T-Max. If I can ever make pictures half as good as theirs I'll be happy.