Hmm, the universe operates in strange ways. I took a picture of Tony Levin back in 2001 for Exposé magazine. Mr. D asked if I would photograph Tony for the story. He apparently noticed my interest in photography. At the time we owned an early point-and-shoot digital camera — a crappy camera by today’s standards. I was still learning how to use it. By the way, I recently read a BBC article about the recent trend to purchase old digital cameras for their poor pixel qualities (https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-64512059). Perhaps my old Nikon D80’s will become hip again too.
The Canon I used back then was extremely low pixels and only shot jpeg’s. All my photos tended to have a grainy quality and led me to edit them into black and white pictures. The main request from Mr. D aside from getting concert photos was to get pictures of the Funk Fingers. I recall the interview ran long and Tony felt rushed for soundcheck. I was given less than a few minutes to prepare and before I was really ready Tony had turned around with the Funk Fingers on, his hand held out towards my face. Click! Click! Click! I didn’t have time to check the viewfinder. The magazine wanted color photos but the photo with Tony lends itself to black and white. The magazine didn’t publish the photo, but I look at it often. It reminds me of where and when I started. It makes me smile and humbles me. I think Mr. Levin is my lucky charm.
The interview from 2001 is available online - http://expose.org/index.php/articles/display/the-tony-levin-interview-2-4.html