Photo: Hyosub Shin, hshin@ajc.com

From one wall, Bono, Kid Rock and Eddie Vedder clutch microphones, scrunch their eyes and sneer down at their viewer.

On another wall, across from the dozens of perfectly focused, meticulously edited images of live, sweaty rock ’n’ roll shows, hangs another photo.

It’s good, but a little less precise. It’s raw, too, with Mick Jagger in motion, preparing for another strut-walk.

And then you see the flaw: the time/date stamp in the lower right corner — the kind of thing that dads on vacation do to preserve a moment.

The shot is from 1994, when the Rolling Stones performed at the Georgia Dome on their “Voodoo Lounge” tour.

Robb Cohen was there, in the photo pit for the first time as a professional. Armed with only a point-and-shoot camera, the rookie had “lens envy” as he glanced at the mega-cameras slung over the shoulders of the media pros surrounding him.

And he had no idea how to turn off the time/date stamp.

That hasn’t been a problem for Cohen in the ensuing decades, during which he estimates he’s shot about 5,000 artists in concert, including six Super Bowls, Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction among them.

The walls in his home office only have room for a few dozen images and a rack of hundreds of photo passes — but they’re enough to make those walls talk.

This month the 6-foot-2-inch shutterbug submitted his 1,000th photo gallery to the AJC — Madonna at Philips Arena on Jan. 20. Cohen has freelanced for the AJC since 2003, and his handwritten list of concerts he’s photographed for the newspaper and its websites reads like a musical alphabet.

From Aerosmith to ZZ Top, Buckcherry to the B-52s, James Brown to Janelle Monae, Cohen has caught many of the top acts from the last 20 years in action.

“The feeling of being in front of the stage, an amazing performance going on and 19,000 screaming fans behind you — it’s a real rush,” Cohen said. “It’s a privilege to do this, and I’ve always treated it as a privilege.”

A Baltimore native, Cohen came to Atlanta in 1972 to attend Emory University.

Photography was an interest — both of his parents were artists — but school was about pre-law and marketing classes.

Still, music tugged at him and Cohen served as concert chairman at the university for two years, helping to bring acts such as James Taylor and the Marshall Tucker Band to Atlanta.

In the ’80s, Cohen managed several Atlanta bands, including The Montanas, Borneo, Arms Akimbo and The Tempted. He handled marketing and booking for The Masquerade in the late ’80s.

Cohen wasn’t a photographer then — unfortunate since then-unknowns with the names Nirvana and Nine Inch Nails frequented the scrappy Old Fourth Ward venue.

When he finally did start fiddling with a camera in the early ’90s — to this day he’s never taken a photo class — his desire to shoot concerts was simple.

“I wanted to get into shows for free,” Cohen, 61, said with a chuckle.

Photo: Cohen talks on the phone as he edits photographs at his home office in Loganville. Hyosub Shin, hshin@ajc.com

His downstairs office is crammed with testimonies to his 20-plus years as a photographer — covers he shot for concert industry trade magazine Pollstar, images that landed in Guitar Player and People magazines, a 2004 Nickelback calendar.

And then there is his prized Kenny Chesney picture framed above his desk.

It’s isn’t a photo of Chesney, actually, but of Cohen. Taken by Chesney.

In September 2007, Chesney was performing at Lakewood Amphitheatre and Cohen was entrenched in the photo pit in front of the stage.

“He’s singing, and he starts pointing at me in the crowd,” said Cohen. “I didn’t know what I had done, but he kept pointing at my cameras. I wasn’t thrilled about handing him a $4,000 camera, but what, am I gonna have an argument with the guy? He stooped down, never missed a beat singing and started taking pictures of me.”

Moments like that make up for 60 seconds at Garth Brooks.