This past weekend, I got the change to interview two members of the British punk/hardcore band the Gallows. The band’s singer, Frank Carter, is also an accomplished tattoo artist and has stated that is full-time job is tattooing, not music. That said, as the Gallows begin to blow up the metal charts, Carter might want to reconsider his career ambitions.

About two weeks ago, I got the opportunity to photograph one of my favorited bands, The Damned, at Irving Plaza in NYC. The band gave me the rare opportunity to shoot for as long as I wanted with flash (a rarity for concert photographers). After a few minutes, I found out why. The band plays emersed in darkness with occassional washes of red and purple. The minimalist lighting scheme, bolstered by the occassional strobe light assault, meant I spent most of the night juggling my exposure compensation dial on my camera and flash.

On top of that, I didn’t spend too much time with my eyes behind the lens, because the show was amazing. For nearly two hours, the band hammered out all their hits, including some rarities and handful of mid-80s goth tunes. With Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee, and Joe long gone, it’s nice to see some punk legends are still hanging in there – alive and well.

I couple of months back I posted my most popular photo based on stock purchases, but I just took a look at my Flickr stats and this is by far the most popular photo I’ve ever taken (at least among the under 18 and female set). Like the description says, I snapped this photograph of Davey while he was chatting with my friend Sharon during an Offspring show. I’m pretty sure they opened the show up and the place was packed. But, no one gave a hoot about AFI at the time and my friend was dying to have a non-dorky photo of her talking with him.

It’s still one of my favorite photographs. I believe I took it with my trust Nikon Zoom Touch 470 AF in either 1996 or 1997.