Before I was born, the Beatles played a would-be legendary set there.

After my senior prom, a group of us went there to watch the sunrise.

When I was first starting to climb higher onto the photography technique learning curve, I took Elise there, and we had one of our first (of many) photo shoots.

And last night, I photographed my first concert there.

Red Rocks Amphitheatre is iconic. And massive. And really makes you work to get to the photographers’ check-in site, let me tell ya. (It’s a rather steep incline is what I’m saying.)

There’s such a history there. It’s a choice destination for concert-goers and provides a landmark moment for bands. It’s a source of state pride. So as a native Colorado gal, it’s one of those places that I always sort of imagined photographing one day.

That day came yesterday. Dan was originally on deck for the Train concert, but then had to head out of town for a conference earlier than anticipated. So I was subbed in.

At a typical concert, you only get three songs of actual shooting time. So say a song is, on average, only four minutes long, you’re looking at about a 12-minute window to capture the nature of the event. Twelve minutes that seem to go by four times faster than that.

After a full year of not shooting concerts I felt a bit anxious and rusty. The lights dimmed, the crowd exploded, I lifted my camera to my eye and hoped to the high heavens that this would be just like riding a bike…

“Breathe…breathe…focus…focus…what’s going on?!…aagh!” So my inner dialogue rambled on for those speedy three songs, but all-in-all I survived. It was rocky, and I most certainly missed moments, but that’s the thing about any pursuit: you have to keep on working at it.

See the full photo gallery and Kyle Wagner’s review on heyreverb.com.