Camp Bestival Preview

Well its the night before LemonSplash Photography sets off for Camp Bestival based at Lulworth castle in Dorset. I will be arriving at the festival two whole days before those with tickets have access to the site. This means hopefully that I will get to take some very unusual photos of the event site totally devoid of festival goers. I'm hoping there will be a strong breeze to enable me to capture some very ethereal images of all the flags fluttering. The weather is very predictable for UK festivals, rain is forecast throughout the event...deep joy!! One of the reasons we are arriving so early is the fact that I am helping deliver 41 sofas to the event...yes I did just type 41 sofas to the event. These are to be used everywhere from VIP areas and dressing rooms to out in the festival site in the knitting tent and also in the bollywood tent. Expect to see images of sofas in very out of the ordinary places on my flickr portfolio site. My partner is hoping we keep a sofa back for our tent as we will be there for 5 days and nights. In return for this favour I have been given unprecedented access to the whole site and not just in front of the numerous stages at this event but also access to everything behind the scenes. Which is probably where I will spend most of my time away from the mud and huge crowds...I'm still washing mud off me from the NASS event two weeks ago!!

Lookout for our images of Camp Bestival on my flickr site and also at www.efestivals.co.uk

NASS in the Rain

Another festival over for 2009.

NASS bills itself as Europe's largest extreme sports festival. By day you are entertained by skateboarders, BMX, FMX, mountain bike trials, old skool slalom skating, inliners, streetboarders and just about anything else dangerous on two wheels. This year saw the introduction of the Goliath ramp. With an 8 metre drop in its not one for the faint hearted. Sadly this year NASS was blighted by the traditional British weather which meant most of the outdoor events were severely curtailed. I did find myself on top of the Goliath ramp at one point though perched on a ledge 25 feet in the air clinging onto my new 300mm F2.8 prime lens photographing the skaters as they came down the ramp. To say I was concerned about my £3.5 k investment was an understatement but I did manage to get some great close ups of the skaters as they popped up over the jump. The lens has some fantastic features and its no wonder it has become the lens of choice for most sports and action photographers.

This years music was kind of split into two genres over two days with dance/drum n bass the order of the day on the Friday and rock music on the Saturday. As you can see from the images here and on my flickr site the rain does nothing to dampen down festival goers when it comes to their music. Within hours the front of the stage was little more than a mud bath with the photographers pit not fairing much better either. I used my 24-105mm lens to photograph much of the acts but again decided to try out my new 300mm for some really close up shots of the vocalists. I even managed to hand hold the lens which was a huge bonus as I fear my monopod would simply have disappeared into the mud had I decided to use it.

The shots above are not what you would call "exhibition" standard shots but they do show what it is editors are looking for when it comes to photographing at these events. I was simply tasked by sportvision and littlepress to capture what was going on. I dont think too many shots will make it to press this year as NASS clashed with T in the Park which is Scotland's answer to Glastonbury or Reading I suppose. They will be used to promote the event next year though and hopefully NASS 2010 will be a sunny affair.

Next stop for LemonSplash Photography is a quite different festival....Camp Bestival in Dorset, lots of live music, stand up comedy, theatre and even a knitting tent. Watch this space and my flickr pages for images and a write up of the event.

Festival Season

This image was taken as Pendulum walked on stage...So very glad I was in the photographer's pit for this one. As you can see from the image this is the crush as thousands of fans push forward in unison to greet them. I always like to turn my camera on the crowd as headline bands take to the stage. They make such fantastic atmospheric shots and I hope give a feeling of the euphoria of the event.
As for the band....Drum and Bass meets hard techno rock and their set didn't disappoint the multitude of fans.
This year sees LemonSplash Photography covering festivals almost every weekend of the summer. We will be covering events as small as SeaSelsey through to medium sized festivals such as NASS and then onto some major players in the festival calender such as Camp Bestival and finishing off the season by returning to the Isle of Wight for the last big festival of the season, Bestival. Along the way I will be photographing fancy dress competitions, huge mega ramps for skateboarding, bmx and inline, angel gardens and strange acts at camp bestival through to surfers and Lily Allen live onstage as she closes Bestival in September.
At 45 you would think I would be taking it easy and winding back a bit but truth told this is something I should have done 20 years ago as its so much fun. hard work but fun non the less.
Lookout on my flickr site over the coming weeks for lots of festival images.
Add to all the festival work my usual wedding work and now arts and craft fairs where I sell my images directly to the public it makes for a thriving business which is much needed in these very difficult trading times.

The Right Place at the Right Time

Yes that really is me photographing the FMX rider whilst he jumps over me some 80 feet in the air and travelling at 60mph!!
Working as a professional photographer its sometimes quite easy to be in the right place at the right time but even on this job I still got to know the guys who were jumping and spent several hours watching them practice before the competition started. Vital if you need to know what it is they are actually going to do. I guess its a bit like wildlife photography you have to know your subject to capture the right images. I think this is true for every type of photography, I also attend weddings and always make sure that I'm in on the rehearsal just in case they have planned something unexpected. One wedding even saw a look a like Elvis walk a bride up the isle of a catholic church singing "the wonder of you". Always expect the unexpected!
The images above were taken by my partner at NASSFEST last year as she couldn't believe exactly where I had positioned myself for the competition. You can see the photos I took at http://www.nassfest.com/ in the photo section of the website as they are being used to promote this years event which I will again be attending. You will notice that the final images barring one were taken from a better vantage point but it was still fun to have those guys flying over my head during the practice runs. You will also find many other images in the photo section from around the event. If you like photographing extreme sports there is no better summer festival to catch all the worlds best riders and jumpers as well as some very cool music to while away the evenings.

Photoshop Glamour

As a wedding photographer I have been asked to do many strange things from add people to the photographs who were not there to on one occasion talk to the groom to coax him out because he had cold feet. Needless to say on that occasion I simply reminded the person asking me that I was a photographer not a councillor. The most common request I get though is to "photoshop" the brides complexion or some other guests complexion, by this they mean can I add that magazine glamour look minus all the wrinkles and blemishes and in some cases make them look younger than they really are. Whilst I have no objection to doing this I do think you can go completely over the top using this technique and make a 40 something woman look closer to 20 which I think can be very unflattering. There are many programs on the market that will do this job for you in no time with a few clicks but they are global effects and again I personally don't like them.
This image above is of my partner who kindly posed for me to allow me to enhance her natural beauty with a few simple techniques in CS3. All I have really done is remove some of the blemishes on her skin as most professional cameras are such high quality that they show up every pore. I then saturated her lips slightly and brightened her eyes. Finally I thickened and darkened her hair slightly. To pull her out of the background you will also notice that I darkened the door and in so doing I created a halo effect around her hair.