For those of you who don’t know, I’m from Seattle, WA.

I was born in Seattle and grew up in South Seattle (in Skyway, to be exact) before moving to Federal Way, WA in the middle of junior high school. I eventually moved back to Seattle in 2005 and went to Seattle University for undergrad, where I studied Photography. After finishing undergrad, I spent 3 more years in Seattle focused on documenting the local music scene and photographing local artists. First focusing on live performances and then eventually, focusing only on portrait sessions. Below are photos from some of my favorite sessions during that time period.

After spending a few hours going through my external hard drives to find the photos above, I had the realization that I had already shared some of them on Flickr more than a decade ago.

Real ones know – Flickr was the site you used to share your photos before Instagram became a thing. Tumblr was another way to share photos, but that site launched sometime in-between Flickr and Instagram. If you considered yourself a photographer and/or generally enjoyed taking photos and sharing them between the years of 2004 - 2010, you probably used any one of those two sites. Or if you were like me, you used all three.

So once I realized that I had already shared some of these photos, I logged into my Flickr account (I thankfully was able to recover the password) and spent some time editing and curating the collection of images on that site, which is now focused entirely live performances. If you’re curious to see what that looks like and don’t mind walking with me down memory lane, you can view that here.

Looking back can be bittersweet; naturally, you remember who you used to be and can get swept up in comparing your today-self with yourself back then. Revisiting old work always reminds me of how much I used to shoot and how much I don’t anymore. Despite that fact, revisiting old work also always reminds me that I’ve become a better photographer from a technical perspective.

Most, if not all of the artists featured above are still making music and if you have Spotify, I highly recommend you check them out. I’ve also created a playlist here.

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Seattle: 2009-2012