So the first show I ever shot was a Panic! at the Disco show in Cleveland, OH in Jan 2019. I drove up to see them in the polar vortex. They had previously been through PGH in the summer and my friend asked if I wanted to go with her to see them, but I wasn't yet into them 1/9

However, I got super obsessed with panic around November so I decided that I was willing to drive the 2 hours up to Cleveland and 2 hours back. Totally worth it. 100% recommend the live show. Panic rules allow people to bring in a camera (1 body, 1 lens) to the shows 2/9

So being the obsessed fan that I am and also a photographer, I brought my Canon T3i and 50mm f/1.8 with me to the show. And I shot 800 photos from my spot in the audience. I kind of overdid it, but I have no regrets. I was sitting in the second row of the bowl in the corner 3/9

@JakeChams , the tour photographer and altogether wonderful human, saw me rocking out and taking photos. After the show he got my attention and asked if I got anything good, to which I responded "I hope so". Two days later, I had just gotten out of grad seminar 4/9

and my phone starts going crazy with instagram notifications. Turns out Jake took a video of me jamming with my camera and shared the photos I had posted the night before on his IG story. This was back before IG told you when someone had shared your post 5/9

So it took me at least 5 mins to figure out what had happened. I jumped from no one important to panic community famous in one post. That's what convinced me that "hey, maybe my photos are actually decent". 6/9

Fastforward a couple of months, I'm super depressed and struggling in grad school. I'm not really getting out of bed or eating except for class and meetings and beamtime. I needed something that wasn't grad school to focus on. 7/9

I figured "you know, I wasn't half bad at that music photography thing, and it was really fun. I wonder what it would take to do more of that" and boom my new gig was born. I researched a while and watched a bunch of @elmakias videos. 8/9

Read a bunch of blog posts by @toddowyoung and went "okay I think I can do this" except I was super scared of doing the unknown. Turns out I have awesome friends and they encouraged me to go for it, to submit requests and reach out. Now I love it. I'm addicted. And I miss it 9/9