Taylor Swift has millions of fans worldwide, but Brampton, Ont.'s Jasmeet Sidhu has gotten closer to the musical icon than most.
"As a photographer, you're so lucky because you get to be front row," the 36-year-old said. "You're basically pushed up to the stage."
Sidhu has photographed Swift at concerts during three separate tours: 1989, Reputation Stadium Tour, and Eras, which kicks off in Canada on Thursday.
"This is going to be the woodstock of our generation -- that concert that people talk about 10, 20 30 years from now," she said.
It all started more than a decade ago with an email she wasn't even sure she'd get a response to.
She had just finished her graduate school at Columbia University in New York and decided to move to L.A. because she wanted to work in music videos.
"I cold-emailed this music director Anthony Mandler just explaining that I really enjoyed his music video work," she said. "At the time he was doing a lot of work with Rihanna, and Jay-Z and Beyonce."
Mandler offered Sidhu a chance to shadow him on set during the production of Swift's "I Knew You were Trouble" music video.
She went.
But the die-hard Swiftie knew she had to play it cool.
"I was like, a long-term relationship with this music video director is better for my career than five seconds of 'fangirling' over Taylor Swift on this music video set," she said.
That discipline paid off. She used the contacts she developed to gain concert access during three separate Swift Tours – in 2015, 2018 and 2023.
That compilation is now part of an exhibit at the CN Tower, where we spoke, and at Toronto's Eaton Centre.
Her artistic journey started in high school - when she signed up for a high school photography elective. One of her first photos was of a waterfall near her house, which she developed in the school's dark room.
And gently encouraging her were her immigrant parents from Malaysia, who had so little when they came to Canada that the kids had to sleep on a single mattress.
But what they did have was the will to dare their daughter to dream.
"I mean, it is a long path," Gurmeet Sidhu, Jasmeet's mother, admits. "It was not an easy path. It was up and down," but ultimately "fruitful," she adds, admitting that she beams with pride when she sees her daughter's photo.
It's a path that has also turned Gurmeet's mother into a Swiftie.
"On the radio, when I see a Taylor Swift song, I make it loud in the car and listen to her," she said.
Although Sidhu takes concert photos professionally, and has also photographed Ed Sheeran, Olivia Rodrigo, and Sia, it's not her full-time job - just a very busy hobby for the photographer, who initially wanted to become a doctor, and recently moved to San Francisco with the hope of starting her own tech company.
And while she reaches for another dream, she wants to keep inspiring the next generation in her own way, just as Taylor Swift does.
"That's why when people come up to me, or email me asking for advice, I try to be generous with my time because someone once upon a time was generous with their time," she said.
Her main advice: keep making connections, even if you aren't guaranteed a reply.
"Every single action you take in a creative career has to be an opportunity of your own making. So how do you create those opportunities? You have to reach out to people."
