Life of the Partyrazzi

Washington's Leading Night-Life Photographers Share a Knack for Shooting to Thrill

Walk into any scenester party, concert or club in Washington these days and you'll encounter them: a nightlife photographer or three, flashes firing at every young lovely and every sartorial type in the room. It happens enough that crowds all seem to know what to do: Hand on hip, hair in face, look coy. Or better, look bored with having your picture taken, a la Peaches Geldof.

By the next day, photos of the scene -- the bands, the pouty ladies, the footwear -- are on Facebook, Flickr or a Web site such as Brightest Young Things. And the party crowd will be logging on to see if they made the cut.

The availability of relatively cheap digital SLR cameras (which provide flexibility with lenses and take better pictures than point-and-shoots) is part of the reason this city now has its own army of shooters documenting their friends, the underground, the inauguration, whatever. The other factor: The Internet, where photos generate hits.

For their part, the partyrazzi -- not exactly paparazzi, not exactly Richard Avedon -- consider themselves artists. And perhaps they do push the boundaries of the medium in the same way the street photographers of the 1940s did.

Night-life photography even has its icons: Alistair Allan, who chronicles London's club kids on the Web site Dirty Dirty Dancing; Los Angeles's Mark Hunter, a.k.a. the Cobrasnake; New York's Merlin Bronques, founder of the notorious Web site Last Night's Party. They have not only captured their respective scenes, they fueled them.

The D.C. party photogs featured here mostly don't get paid. But it's a gig with certain benefits, including access to events, new friends and fans (just read the comment stream), and sometimes it leads to paid work. Clubs are even hiring them to make sure patrons feel like supermodels.

We followed three photogs -- a former nonprofit-group employee, an Iraq war veteran and an office worker -- as they covered events till the wee hours. Here, we present their work.