It is one thing for a musician’s fingers to blur in a picture, especially when you’re shooting in low light. But this past Friday I had the rare occasion to actually see a pianist’s fingers blur right before my eyes, and it was phenomenal!!.

Oh. The. Passion. The Passion. THE PASSION.

Ravi Coltrane and his band members were seriously in the groove, complete with arched necks, grimaced faces, eyes rolling back just slightly — they were in The Moment.

THE MOMENT.

You know what I’m talking about, there aren’t many of them in a performance, those moments when the musician is feeling the music so hard that it appears to hurt him. I mean REALLY hurt him. They are in another world, eyes closed, face showing the kind of passion that most people can’t even dream of let alone ever have the privilege to experience in a lifetime.

It is as if nobody else exists for that fleeting moment.

One thing that most people don’t realize is that I am not a music expert. One night in December of 2009, I was out at a live music performance and happened to have my camera with me so I decided to take some pictures. And it just kind of happened to me. I became simply and whole-heartedly addicted to these moments of musical passion.

Every time I photograph live jazz music, it is a journey for me to that moment. It is the only thing in the world that takes me there.

And I love it. I live for it. It’s like I will do anything to capture that moment with my camera – squat down midway, legs quivering, the weight of my camera making my arms burn. I mean REALLY burn. But I stay there, quivering, hurting, waiting for the moment, sweat dripping down my back, my neck, and running down my face. It’s the moment that I am desperate with passion on fire, burning with desire for. I’ve gone home with bruise-blackened knees, sore body, exhausted but FULL.

I am FULL when I am finished.

This is what happened to me this past Friday at Bohemian Caverns in Washington DC. The lighting was perfect, the setting was beautiful. And the music. The music was absolutely incredible. Here are a few of the pictures that I took.