Festival photography tips

Crucially have two camera bodies with you with two fast F2.8 lenses attached. Make sure you have as many memory cards as you can carry as it is better to shoot in RAW mode and you'll quickly fill them up. Be bold, if you have to get in someone's way for a moment to get the shot then do it. Be imaginative, you will see other photographers crowd around certain positions but that does not mean they are the best; move around and try to frame with your eyes and not the camera. USE the stage lights, they are your best friend so find imaginative ways to utilize them. Finally, you will only have 3 songs to get your shots done so it is tempting to rush but have some patience. If your composition is perfect then wait for the subject to get into position

Technical challenges

I received my 24-70mm lens just before the bank holiday weekend; it was a busy 3 days with 4 gigs to shoot. LDOS was the last one to do so by then I was well versed in how to use the lens to best effect. I had a choice of attaching it to the D300 or the D80 I borrowed; I chose to pair it with the D300 as I knew those were most likely to be the better shots.

The D80 was married to the 70-200mm; the limitations of the D80 were made very apparent when on several occasions it would not focus quick enough for me to get the shots I wanted. it was very frustrating; it is annoying when you are smacked with technical limitations. I tried several focusing modes but no matter what I attempted the D80 was just too slow for Gig photography.

The D300 and the 24-70mm were a happy couple in comparison; focusing was quick and sharp, I also moved the quality down one notch to shoot in high quality JPG so I could shoot at 7 frame per second. Colours were faultlessly and the large 3.5" screen made quick previews easy.

Because the photographers are only allowed the first 3 songs in a set I had to shoot fast and find new positions very quickly, so having two camera bodies is ESSENTIAL. I had the full range from 24-200 covered; this gives me the best creative options in any moment. It was such a buzz switching from one cam to the other; like I said the only let down was the D80's focusing speed but that was better than having no second camera at all!

Expectations.

At that point, The Last day of Summer was the biggest gig I have covered. And even though I am relatively new at this I was not getting too overly excited because I knew I had a job to do. I asked my friend April to join me so that someone could look after the rest of the gear while I was shooting and also to enjoy the festival as a fan of live music as opposed to a being a photographer.

From what I gather The Last day of Summer (LDOS) in Stowe was the first year it has happened. If that is the case then the potential for this festival to reach Reading or V-Fest proportions is well in its reach. The line up of Athlete, Black kids, Fun Loving Criminal, Supergrass and, my personal favourite of the evening, Richard Ashcroft was just too good to be true. Also one of my favourite local bands The Swamis were performing at the VIP tent.

Photographing these artists just feets away from them was both amazing and numbing; the former because they're well established artists, the latter because I needed to get great performance shoots of them which meant I had a serious job to do!