Getting approved to shoot Nothing More's The Carnal Nature Tour flipped the switch immediately; calendar locked, batteries charged, lenses cleaned. Naturally, the day refused to cooperate. A Teams meeting ran long, the kind that steals five minutes at a time until you’re suddenly doing Strip traffic math in your head. I parked at Caesars, slung the camera bag over my shoulder, and hustled across Las Vegas Boulevard through a crowd that proved, once again, anyone saying Vegas is “dead” has...

I shoot metal more than anything. Dark rooms, fog thick enough to chew, red lights blasting faces into silhouettes, guitarists whipping hair like helicopter blades, pits opening and closing like moving fault lines; it’s where I feel most at home creatively. Metal gives you intensity, unpredictability, and a constant current of motion through the lens. But every once in a while, you need a hard left turn. Something with bounce, humor, and color. When Spike and the Gimme Gimmes  announced a Las...

Thursday night in Vegas. The neon was humming, but I was tuned out. I was standing in line to snag my media pass for Spike and the Me Gimmes , AirPods in, volume up, completely sealed off from the noise of the strip. I was in my own world, jamming out, oblivious to the guys in line next to me. They were laughing, gesturing, and apparently cracking jokes at my expense, but I missed every word. Once I got inside and the AirPods came out, a gentleman walked up to me with a knowing grin. He...