Bestival

Bestival – September 8-11th, 2011, Isle of Wight
http://www.bestival.net/

Bestival is quite literally one of the best music festivals in the UK, and quite possibly in the world.  I spent 4 days camping on the Isle of Wight and had the most surreal and amazing time, with some of the best bands around, best vibes, best food and generally best everything.

For obvious reasons, some of these images are simply snapshots, and are not intended to be particularly arty or fantastically composed.  In any case I don’t think these do the festival enough justice – it’s impossible to capture the exact ambience, but hopefully you will get some kind of idea.

All images are taken with my trusty 18-55mm lens (yes, the one all ‘professionals’ wouldn’t bother picking up).

Efficient packing?

The queue for buses and taxis on the Isle of Wight from Ryde to the festival itself were ridiculous.  We waited around 2.5hrs.

Finally, we arrived!

(Our wonderful tent featuring yours truly)

Festival food – hardly the healthiest but easily burned off by moshing to dubstep later ; )

I have to give a shout out to Strumpets with Crumpets – quite possibly the best food stall at Bestival.  The above was a marshmallow and chocolate crumpet. Divine.

Public Enemy were headlining on the Friday and some of the crew came out into the crowd beforehand:

Me as Flava Flav ; ) Yeahhh boyyyy!

So before they came onstage a few people tried to scramble onto the stage..

.. and were promptly dragged away by security

I’m more used to shooting in the pit than from the front row of the crowd, speaking of which – the pit for Public Enemy was packed with photographers – way more than for any other gig I have seen.

I have to say, the energy of Flava Flav and Chuck D is just fab – they were running around all over the place and getting the crowd totally revved up.

He photobombed my pic:

So mid-way through the gig, Flava Flav noticed me (no doubt thanks to the clock), blew me a kiss and personally gave me a copy of his autobiography (which I am currently mid-way through reading).  It was definitely one of the highlights for me and a very nice bonus!  He also told me he loved me! Thanks Flava : )

He signed my clock later too. My £1.69 clock from IKEA.  Funnily enough I’d planned to throw it away – not anymore!

Ants at night

Ants in the day

Pendulum!

For some reason when I looked back at my pics I took literally 37 pictures of Pendulum from a distance – all crooked, blurry images.  I have no idea what prompted me to repeatedly shoot the stage over and over – I blame a chocolate brownie I had right before the show which I’m convinced had more than just chocolate in.

Lasers are fun

One of the highlights – Asian Dub Foundation.  I have loved this band for ages, but seeing them live took their music to a completely different level.  They were playing in one of the smaller tents which had one of the best atmospheres.  YouTube them if you don’t know them.

Bestival is synonymous with randomness

It’s Raptor Jesus!

More fest food – Paella and ribs!

Saturday was fancy dress day.  I had planned to rehash my Flava outfit but now that I had his autograph over the clock, I decided I couldn’t possibly wear that again.

I found another Flava instead!

Raptor Jesus feeding geese (or scaring them away even)

Raptor Jesus posing with his people

Can you tell who these are?

Amy Winehouse and hmm.. not sure who the guy is meant to be.

Spice Girls:

Kelis:

Another highlight was a set by dubstep pioneers Skream and Benga, who stage dived:

I took a video of it:

Some serious dubstep moshing going on there!

Bestival isn’t just about the music – there were loads of other things to do and see, like The Wall of Death:

Winners of the fancy dress competition – Beastie Boys:

Slipknot and lots of Amy Winehouses – not a particularly likely combination:

My idol, PJ Harvey:

This was called the Swamp Shack:

Gotta love festival toilets, or not:

A festival isn’t complete without rain and mud:

This shop had pretty much every essential item you could possibly need when camping, including the fabulous ‘2 man pop-up shit tent’.

Said tent in reality:

The queues to charge phones were just as big as the toilet queues:

The youngest SLR photographer ever? So cute.

Kelis

I have to mention Mr Motivator, who gave a workout class to an absolutely jam packed and overflowing tent, and who got the loudest reception out of anyone I saw at Bestival. This guy is a legend.

Mocking the drunk man:

These guys photobombed me by taking a picture of themselves while I stood at the bar – unaware they were even shooting themselves.

And again..

.. and again!

Near our campsite was the Afterburner venue:

It looks pretty lame, right? Well, I’ve included this picture as it’s the only one I have of it, but in reality the DJs here were playing some of the best tunes in the early hours of the morning, and bursts of fire would come out of it every so often.  Whoever was DJ’ing here deserves a medal, or two.

Bjork ended the Main Stage’s performances on the last day.

The music carried on in the Big Top Tent with DJ Shadow:

So there we have it – a brief snapshot of Bestival.  I say ‘brief’ as there was so much more to it than what these images depict (such as the Cure who performed a 2.5 hour set).

Thanks for looking, as usual! : )

Kodak 400 x2

London & Zurich – August 2011

I shot 2 rolls of Kodak 400 over the last few weeks.

(Nikon F3 – 50mm f1.8 – Kodak 400)

South London

Walking to the station in the morning – the usual signs of randomness.

Canary Wharf

I’m not used to shooting blindly; estimating distance isn’t my greatest strength.  This image could have been nice had I not got the focus on his shoe instead of his face : )

Limehouse is a lovely area.  Whenever I pass through it I don’t feel like I’m in London until the buildings in the distance remind me.

40 floors up

Hackney

Correct focusing (judging distance) + good composure + perfect timing = successfully shooting from the hip

The below has incorrect focusing and bad composure.  This method of shooting definitely isn’t my best.

Again, incorrectly focusing from the hip:

How much practice do I need?! At least you can see the fine detail in TFL’s Tube upholstery.

Kingsbury

Dhokla – a Gujarati speciality:

En route to Zurich

This is why I always insist on having a window seat:

I think I was the only female on the plane.  Only businessmen in suits take 7am flights, apparently.

Zurich

Finishing off the first roll with a self-portrait:

Haven’t done one of those in a while.

The Apple store:

I haven’t seen one of those phones in a while.  I can’t imagine using anything other than a smartphone now.

I’m surprised some of these shots came out so dark considering it was still fairly light and I was shooting at f1.8 with ISO 400.. hmm.

It was 30C every day while I was in Zurich and I spent most of the days indoors (in the office), so in the evenings I made the most of the weather and walked around the lake, which is stunning.

Teuscher – one of the best chocolate shops:

There is no excuse for getting the focus wrong here as I was looking through the view-finder:

They were playing chess. They noticed me as soon as I clicked, and they found it amusing that they had just been photographed.  Too bad I ruined the frame!

One to full-view:

I had to get a shot from the front.

He winked as soon as I took it, and then followed me slowly on his bike until I took the stairs down to the banks of the lake.  I saw him with his gf I assume maybe an hour later as I sat on a bench, and he slowed down and stared at me, but of course didn’t say anything in the presence of his gf.  It was a funny moment.

Awesome band playing by the lake – Asep Stone Experience:

That was the last frame.  By now it was around 8pm and too dark for Kodak 400, and I was gutted I’d left a roll of Neopan 1600 in the hotel.  It would have been dark by the time I would have fetched it, so I had no choice but to switch to my trusty digital.

Sausage and rosti at Zeughauskeller, a traditional Swiss restaurant:

Definitely recommend that!

1050 CHF for a Cartier lighter..

Only 15,900 CHF for this watch:

It’s a good job Switzerland doesn’t have looting – none of these shops had shutters.

Not sure why but I think these gave me bad dreams:

The shuttle train at the airport:

It had Swiss-related sounds playing like cows mooing, cow-bells and yodeling.

I need to get me some 1600 colour film.  I have never tried it, nor seen it sold anywhere.