nick pickles music photographer

Second festival, and my fourth T in the Park. Still as mental as ever, 85,000 scottish folk on the booze - a very unique atmosphere!

It’s hard to describe T this year - my first time shooting Muse, Eminem’s first european gig for five years and being on stage with one of my favourite bands, Editors, all great experiences. There were some incredible moments, including a *huge* version of ‘God is a DJ’ by Faithless, Tom from editors running towards me screaming during ‘Smokers outside the hospital doors’ and another epic Mumford and Sons set, but something didnt feel quite right.

It was probably due to the rain that battered the site on Saturday, and a distinct lack of sleep, but I also wonder whether it was down to a lineup that lacked any real unique moments of greatness.

It was a buzz shooting Eminem, but it isnt my kind of music and the consensus seems to be it wasnt exactly a stellar performance. Many of the bands playing are doing the rounds,  something affecting lots of festivals this year, and there wasnt much variety on the bigger stages.

T is still a great festival, with an incredibly passionate crowd and a great setting, but I think they need to rekindle the kind of variety that brought Brian Wilson and a whole host of acts who were ‘one offs’ to the various stages.

On the upside, Im incredibly happy with some of my shots (below) so I must be doing something right!

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so, T in the Park came and went, for another year. My third time of shooting the festival that I’ve come to love despite the fact that it is quite clearly mental.

a better line-up than Glastonbury (or in my opinion anyway) offered some new photo opportunities - I’ve been looking forward to shooting the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s for a while, plus seeing Blur after missing them at Glasto. And, although it didnt get confirmed until a few hours beforehand, I set off with a hope that I’d get clearance to shoot the Killers from side of stage.

i had a great time - it’s difficult not to working with the team at T, including Andy Stubbs as a photographer side-kick. but, on a photographic level, the overwhelming majority of my stuff just didnt cut the mustard. it’s strange to talk of form when essentially all i do is stand infront of a band and point a camera at them, but i feel very out of form at present. not capturing any of the energy or feeling of the acts, as my pretty lacking lady ga ga shots show.  i’m not sure if it’s just fatigue of seeing so much live music in the past few years that very little excites me any more, but i’ve been left feeling pretty underwhelmed by alot of the acts i’ve seen this year - and it comes across in the photos.

i did manage to grab a few shots i like - some portraits of peter doherty, tv on the radio, and this shot of Damon Albarn that has a nice festival vibe to it. anyway, i’m not sure what to do really - i’ve got kendal calling coming up before V and Leeds, so it will be good to challenge myself in a very different environment, but otherwise i dont know if i should go to an art gallery, take photos of trees or just try and avoid imagery. given my usual absence of planning, i imagine whatever happens will be made up, but if you see my dubious talent lying in a field somewhere, please pick it up and return it - i’m lost without it.

For all that they’re not my favourite live band, this was still pretty cool. shooting the first threee from the front of the stage was a real buzz, althout the process wasn’t helped by some very on/off lighting.

The half-way point in 2008’s festival season, a free moment and some free wi-fi. a good time to reflect I think.

 Already I’ve moved on from last year - just getting into glastonbury was amazing, but the weekend was a blast. 2 weekends later, I was sat in suffolk, surrounded by pink sheep and 3 girls who got married. put another way, I was at latitude festival. Inbetween I’d been to T in the Park, seen the Queen, stood on stage infront of 30,000 people and generally ran around quite alot.

 Now the only running I’m doing is arround Harrogate’s stray, my camera is having a wee break and I’m not wearing sunglasses quite as much. I even had a hair cut, just to help me fit into the real world.

 I love festivals, I really do. Its always a shame when the  sunday evening lull kicks in, when you realise tomorrow it’s back to normality and you start looking for those people still wearing their wristnbands, those knowing looks of “i was there too, and god i miss it too” before thoughts turn to next year. It doesnt seem like two minutes since I stood watching hot chip at connect, but in 4 weeks time it will all be over again.

It’s strange not knowing whether I’ll do this again - my photography is on borrowed time, and that cant go on forever, perhaps not even to next June. But for now, I’m just going to enjoy myself and try take the odd snap i’m proud of. I think I forgot that after all the buzz, it’s the photos that last and I need to work much harder at coming up with the shots I want to look back at when this is all a memory. So maybe I will stick at it, just a touch longer anyway.

Oh, and if you want photos from Glastonbury, Latittude or T in the park, the photo galleries are now up here