In 2003 I was wrapping up my Music Degree at University of British Columbia and working in a music store. I stumbled my way into selling vintage saxophones and high end wooden recorders on Ebay. One day my friend, Cory Weeds, who owned the Jazz Cellar next door, called and said he needed a picture of what a Hammond B3 Organ was so he could show his designer. So I took a photo, sent it over, and it became the cover of the album Crash: The Doctor Is In.
That small favor turned into a doorway. My dad gave me his old film camera, and two photographers also working in the music store started teaching me the ropes. I was also playing a lot of gigs as a trombone player and was lucky to count a bunch of musicians as my friends. Combine that with the fact I was hanging out in the Jazz Cellar a few nights a week and I started to shoot more and more. Understanding the musicians was a help but understanding the music itself was a huge help for me. Different musicians have quirks. Cory always drops his horn right when the song is done, while Dave's faces during drum solos are ironic. Tilden always looks at Jodi in the last 8 bars of his solo to see if she wants to solo. This allows me to get in position to capture these moments.
Jazz Clubs are not easy places to shoot. Not only do you have to contend with not getting in the way of the staff or customers, the lighting is challenging, when it's available. And you can't shoot flash.
I developed my style out of necessity. Lighting in Jazz Clubs is challenging at best and both on film, and when I switched to digital a few years later, the recipe was the same; ISO 1600, slam that f stop down to 2.8 (if you're lucky) and try to hand hold at 1/30th second. High contrast, high grain was out of necessity.
The Jazz Cellar was a special place. It's where I cut my teeth and having the club and record label use my photos was a natural fit. They started using my photos on albums, posters, and press kits, and before long my work was showing up everywhere. Since then, my images have appeared on more than 50 albums, in every major Canadian newspaper, in DownBeat, and in the late Canadian jazz magazine Coda.
Over the years I've had the chance to photograph some of the greats: Benny Golson, Benny Green, Bucky Pizzarelli, Chris Potter, Christian McBride, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Fathead Newman, Joey DeFrancesco, Harold Mabern, Steve Davis, Eric Alexander, George Coleman, along with so many Vancouver musicians who built the scene. Standing a few feet from players like these taught me more about music than school did. Jazz is an aural tradition passed down through generations.