A band mid-song, mid-arc, mid-everything. Shooting Anberlin meant trusting the dark and the strobe, and catching the half-second where the whole set snapped into focus.

I shot most of this from the pit, low and looking up, which is the only honest angle for a club this size. From down there the guitarist towers, cut-off denim vest, sleeve of ink, a black Les Paul slung across him, and the stage rig and amp stacks pile up behind like a little cathedral of speaker cones. A red footlight in the corner kept bleeding into the magenta wash, so the whole frame ran hot and cold at once.

The trick was the strobe. It would punch the band out of total black for a beat and then drop them again, so you learned to feel the rhythm of it and fire on the flash. Most frames were nothing. Then one would land with him leaning into the mic, eyes off somewhere past the back wall, the fretboard catching a hard edge of light, and that one frame paid for the fifty I threw away.