Last Sunday I had a press pass for the Traumzeit Festival here in Germany. Plenty of photos from the day have been added to the gallery.
Shooting festivals is seriously exciting stuff! Running from stage to stage to make sure you get there in time for the first three songs (which is usually all you're allowed to shoot), being ready to catch anything that can happen in front of the camera - without spraying and praying of course!
And then there's the small matter of light! Shooting with some daylight on an outside stage is fairly relaxing. There's not an awful lot that can go wrong. Even with the artists stage lighting, you can manage to meter the camera fairly constantly and get good hit rates.
When you dash to the next stage, which happens to be indoors, that's when the fun starts.
Camera settings obviously need to change completely for shooting in the dark. You get help from the stage lighting of course, but how many bands have you been to see that come on to the stage to a mega light show? Most start gentle, and dark! Not helpful!
Once you get metered, and you need to do it quick, you can start firing off some shots only to have the light suddenly change from blue to red, or disappear all together for a few seconds!
Shooting festivals is big fun! Any thing can happen, anywhere and at any time!
One thing that is guarenteed, is that you'll get to spend the day watching your viewfinders light meter dance like it's part of the show!
