V Festival

Glorious sunshine and heavy schedule shooting big, commercial artists was the order of the weekend at V.
Artists such Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Lily Allen, Pixie Lott and Dizzee Rascal have been getting big amounts of media attention with their antics on and off the stage, so in terms of potential photo sales this was a cracker. Add bands as huge as The Killers into the mix and it leaves little time to do much other than run around from one stage to the hour shooting, editing and knocking back the odd beer. There wasn't even time watch England winning the Ashes unfortunately, but hey, if I'm not going to be seeing that, a festival is about as good a place to be.
The downsides to the weekend were Oasis pulling out, missing out on shooting Amy Winehouse playing with The Specials (although only one photographer was present for this as she only appeared for the encore when we were all shooting someone else) and Lady Gaga ridiculous 90seconds of photographing per song rule.
Overall, for a festival I wouldn't pay to go - the commercial feel to the festival means it pales in comparison to gatherings like Glastonbury and Bestival - it was well organised and good fun.













www.samirhussein.com

Bestival - Day 2

Saturday turned out to be a very good day of music and shooting, but a bad day for my equipment and the weather, which continued to chuck it down in buckets.
My laptop died hours for Winehouse (the main reason for shooting the festival), which means despite a lot of time trying to fix the screen I couldn't file my photos on the same night, which will mean a loss of potential sales.
The surprise acts turned out to be The Specials (bottom photo) - who were a lot of fun - and Grace Jones, who proved excellent to photograph, changing costume for every song! She was followed by Hot Chip, who got into the spirit of things by wearing fancy dress (second from bottom photo) and they got the whole crowd at the main stage dancing away. Winehouse followed and was hugely disappointing. She was simply awful - not only was she 45 minutes late, she could barely sing and the huge crowd soon dispersed. I've seen and photographed her a few times and she's always produced the goods but here she looked and sounded a wreck.

Hop Farm Festival

It was back to Hop Farm for another very enjoyable day of shooting. The sun didn't shine like yesterday, but bands - Supergrass (second from bottom), Primal Scream (bottom) and the legendary Neil Young liked up to expectations. Young performed a favourite song of mine 'Hey Hey, My My' while I was photographing him and I have to say he sounded amazing. His voice sounded as good as ever and it was a pleasure being so close while he played his classics.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bLP4DWTi6s

The Mighty Boosh Festival

This was a fun day-long festival to shoot save for two things: the long walk carrying heavy camera gear from the station to the festival site (we were told it would take 15 minutes, but it took 45 minutes to get onsite) and the PR letting pretty much any one with any kind of camera front of stage with the real photographers to shoot the show. I've got no problem with competing with other photographers and you tend to find a way to work with them, but letting in teenage girls, who were taking pics of Noel Fielding with their camera phones and getting in our way was ridiculous.
Thankfully, I was able to shoot around them and it didn't stop me from getting really good material of the Mighty Boosh, The Charlatans and Gary Newman (all below) amongst others. And on another plus side the festival was very relaxed with great weather. Tomorrow I return to Hop Farm where Neil Young headlines.

The Great Escape - Day 3

On the final day, having just watched the FA Cup final, I came across quite a sight on the beach front by Brighton pier in the form of a naked man taped to a lamp post. To make it worse, he was surrounded by hundreds of spectators during this hugely busy period on a Saturday evening. (Bottom photo). He was eventually released by his so called friends, who had watched him ridiculed for an hour or so from afar.
Music wise, the best act I shot were Lightspeed Champion (top photo), although Crystal Castles (second from top photo) have an insane live show, with the lead singer spending nearly all her time jumping in the crowd, accompanied by frenzied strobe lighting.
I also caught New Zealand group Cut Off Your Hands and north London youngsters Bombay Bicycle Club, who although good, proved slightly disappointing in that they hadn't developed their sound or live act much since when I saw them over a year ago.

The Great Escape - Day 2

Because the music didn't get underway until the evening it gave plenty of time to wander around Brighton shopping and relaxing with friends. Once the bands did get started however, it was a quick turnaround to get from one venue to the next in order to photograph the band I wanted. Yeasayer, from New York, (top three photos) had been building quite a bit of hype and their prog style rock was very impressive at times.
I followed that up with by shooting a more conventenial sounding American guitar band, The Holds Steady, who were fantastic fun to see perform. The lead singer in a geeky looking forty something (bottom photo), but the energy and spirit he and the rest of the band put into their show marks them out as one a must see band.

The Great Escape - Day 1

It felt fantastic to leave London for a long weekend to photograph The Great Escape Festival in Brighton. Described as Europe's version of SXSW in Texas, the music takes place across over 30 venues close to the sea front, all within walking distance of one another. Having the beach and sea air gave it a nice feel and this meant it had a far more pleasant and less hectic than the Camden Crawl.
On the first day I photographed the crazy, but enjoyable Ida Maria (bottom photo), before catching the superb Vampire Weekend (top two photos).

The Camden Crawl - Day 1

My day started with an email from the PR at the Camden Crawl asking if I could come and cover a secret lunchtime Enter Shikari MySpace gig. The band have a reputation for staging some of the craziest live gigs around, and it's through this and MySpace that they have build such a large, mainly teenage, following.
Their show, played in front of around 150 people in the Bull n Gate in Kentish Town, didn't disappoint. The lead singer started the gig by saying: "I'm going to be careful not to stage dive today - there's too many expensive cameras in the front row." Within 30 seconds of the band getting going however, he'd hurled himself into the crowd to jump around madly.
Enter Shikari's music is too heavy for my liking, but they certainly put on an exhilarating live show (bottom photo). I was so close to the stage for most of the gig, that it become tricky to capture the movement and action, even with a wide angle lens. I got some better results though, when I moved to the side and back of the excitable crowd.
The rest of the Camden Crawl was an enjoyable migration from one venue to another to catch the huge choice of live acts on show. With an obvious eye on selling my photos, I tended to stick to the more established and breaking names such as Sam Sparro (second bottom photo), Robyn (second top photo) and Does It Offend You, Yeah? (top photo). Having a pass allowing me to skip all queues was massively handy and meant I had time to duck into venues to check out bands I wasn't shooting around to catch up with friends around Camden.