There were a few bands playing on the second day of Beautiful Days that I was particularly looking forward to. Three Daft Monkeys, Seth Lakeman, Arthur Brown and the brilliant Bellowhead were performing in the Big Top, while the Main Stage was to be playing host to British Sea Power, classic 80s rockers New Model Army, and James. Tim Booth, of James, is a very interesting and exuberant performer, so I was looking forward to getting pictures of him, and I’m happy with any excuse to see Seth Lakeman, especially close enough to take pictures.
Seth Lakeman
New Model Army
And the Main Stage headline act from the second day of the festival – James (pictured – Tim Booth)
One of the things that I enjoy about festivals, is the contact with other photographers. Usually, you’re in, you shoot the first three songs, and then you’re out, and unless it’s a band you like and you hang around to watch them, you head off to process the pictures from the evening. At a festival, everybody’s settled in for the duration, so once you’ve shot the start of a band’s performance, there’s a fair bit of time before the next photo opportunity to have a chat with the people you share that hallowed area at the front of the stage with. There were a few people that I recognised from last year’s festival this year, and a couple of new faces too. In the comparative quiet of the backstage area, a few of us got chatting about what kit we’re using. It wasn’t a competition, and there was no “my lens is bigger than yours” one-upmanship, it was a genuine exchange of ideas, approaches, and attitudes towards our craft.
So we discussed our preferred “festival” kit bags. Last year was my first festival, and I brought way too much stuff with me. Luckily, I don’t camp at Beautiful Days, I have a convenient off-site bolt-hole where I can store spare kit, charge batteries, have a shower, use a real toilet, that kind of thing, so it didn’t matter too much, but there was still plenty of stuff that I took with me that didn’t get used. This year, I learned from that and thinned down my bag a fair bit.
Earplugs – absolutely essential for shooting live bands. It’s extremely noisy at the front of the stage, and certainly at Beautiful Days, security won’t let you around the stage if you don’t have them. I’ve always struggled with those foam ones that you squidge down and then push into your ear, but I recently decided to splash out, and bought some of the decent ones that are designed specially for musicians. They’re those silicon “mushroom” type plugs, and they have interchangeable filters to attenuate different frequencies of sound by differing amounts. I was quite impressed – with the plugs in I could still have a conversation, and I could hear all of the music clearly but at the end of each day there was no ringing or buzzing in my ears. Plus they live in a neat little key-ring cannister that I can hang round my neck right along with my backstage pass and my “Spudz” lens cloth.
Rain-cover – one for me, and one for the camera. Typically, the small one that covers the camera cost a lot more than the big one that covers me! It’s allowed me to keep the camera out of the bag on a fair few occasions when rain would normally stop play.
Camera body, and one lens – Yep, just one lens. When I checked through the pictures from my first festival, I found that despite using two different lenses, the best images were all taken using a fairly narrow range of focal lengths. The Canon 24-70 f2.8 L lens is now my weapon-of-choice for live bands and festival work. The constant f2.8 aperture is great for low light, and the clarity and sharpness of the lens is just brilliant. The zoom range is perfect for the way I like to shoot – from the photographers’ pit, 24mm is wide enough that the I can get a good shot across the whole stage, and 70mm is plenty of zoom for close-ups.
Speedlight, diffuser and ETTL cable – Flash isn’t allowed when you shoot the bands (even though the audience with their compacts standing right behind you are flashing away), but for general shots around the festival site a little fill-flash comes in pretty handy.
Batteries, charger, and spare memory cards – that little lot goes without saying! Staying off the festival site means that I can charge batteries each night, and empty the contents of my memory cards onto the laptop, and start each day nice and fresh.
And that was pretty much it.
Coming soon – The final day of Beautiful Days 2010 – I eat the best mashed potato ever, get completely soaked, and have the joys of a really good cup of tea explained to me by Billy Bragg.