RockNess Day 2

The first full day at RockNess, a 11 0'clock pick up afforded me a long lie, although I was still up at 9am, backing up yesterdays photos to the external drive!

I opened my hotel room door to find a little bag of surprises, the Travelodge breakfast bag, a croissant with the consistency of a sausage, a hard muffin, dodgy cornflakes and a bottle of orange, quick trip to Tesco for the 8 item £3.20 brekkie to set us up for the day!

Thankfully the issues with the internet were, for the most part, sorted, and I could upload images from site, giving me less work to do back at the hotel, bed before 3am this morning is a distinct possibility. The weather was changeable, a few outbursts of heavy rain, but all in all not to bad.



Seen quite a few artists that were new to me today, the fantastic Japanese Popstars probably one of the highlights, and some old favourites like Broken Records and Frightened Rabbit. The headliners were The Chemical Brothers, who put on a spectacular light show, which made photography almost impossible, managed to get a few shots, but the lasers, strobes and backlighting made it very tricky.

One of the most enjoyable aspect of doing the festival, is getting the crowd shots. A lot of people are quite well oiled, and aren't shy in wanting their photos taken, it's great fun meeting loads of people and makes for great images.

Away to bed now, ready for the likes of Paulo Nutini and Glasvegas tomorrow, it's been a very quick couple of days, non stop, exhausting but braw fun!


Dave

Day 1 at RockNess

Phew, what a day/night/morning!

We departed Glasgow at 1130, the traffic was a nightmare, with roadworks on the A9, arriving at the site at around 1800. Registration was swift, then onto the media tent to set up, no power and no wifi! The power was quickly resolved, but wifi was a different matter, hence the reason I'm still up at 0315 uploading images!

The photography itself was great, a scout round the site to find out where the pit entrances were, plenty of crowd shots, then photos of Katy B, Mark Ronson, Zane Lowe, DJ Shadow, Kasabian and Groove Armada. Some of the more dance orientated acts were a bit more difficult to shoot than the bands, as there are only so many ways you can shoot someone DJing or standing at a MacBook! Kasabian were full of energy and Katy B was a real crowd pleaser!

Back to the hotel to upload the images, then a few hours sleep before it all starts again!

Hopefully the site wifi issues will be resolved tomorrow!


Dave

RockNess preparations

It's the eve of RockNess and I'm rather excited about it!

I've shot hundreds of gigs, but usually they are indoors, and I either get home to edit the images, or at least inside in the warmth. This weekend, I'm going to be shooting, editing and uploading from site. I've just finished cleaning equipment, charging what seems like millions of batteries, formatting cards and checking and checking again that I have cards, readers, chargers etc etc

I'm leaving at 10am tomorrow, and aim to update the blog with my experiences and some images tomorrow night or Saturday morning!

The first place that the images will be available is on www.stv.tv, there should be links from the main page!

Dave

PS - apologies for the quality of the image above, just a quick snap with the iPhone!

Starting my Blog

So, I've flirted with the idea of starting a blog for a wee while now, not sure if it will interest many people, but at least it will document what I'm doing and how my business is progressing.

A bit of background on myself, I'm 35 and started my own photography business a few years back. I do a little bit of everything, but specialise in weddings and portraits. I love photographing music and sports as well, and do a bit of freelance stuff for STV, some newspapers, websites etc. All in all, everything's going well.

This year has seen things move on quite a bit, I am currently getting a new website developed, and have an excellent range of sample albums from Loxley and Graphistudio displaying my wedding portfolio, I am going to be covering my first music festival, Rock Ness, in June, and despite not really advertising much, I am getting a steady stream of wedding and portrait bookings through "word of mouth".

Once my website is up and running, I aim to concentrate more on marketing and promoting the business, it's hopefully something that I can do full time, in the not too distant future.

Photography is something that I love, I love photographing people, hopefully that comes through in my work. I look forward to regularly updating my blog, but I'm not a writer, so I apologise in advance for any grammatical and spelling errors!

Dave