The Great Escape
For those not involved with the music industry, it is indeed a “Great Escape”, a chance to spend 3 days in the diverse city of Brighton on the south coast listening to many new bands playing every style of music your can think of (and many you cannot).
The festival is spread out across the city in many venues which range from small dark rooms in pubs to bright street gigs and even The Dome. It’s this variation in location along with the fact that so many of the acts are just unknowns that make this event a difficult, challenging but enjoyable event to photograph.
It takes educated guesses and a lot of luck to make enough as a photographer here to even cover your costs. That said, if you do manage to photograph the next “Lady GaGa” or “Take That”, you could do very nicely. This year I spent even more time talking to others and researching to choose my “hit list”, even then, time table changes and cancellations changed the bands that I photographed on the final day. So who and what? Over the 3 days I shot almost 30 bands, below is cross section which should give you an idea of the different challenges faced by a music photographer:
FRANK TURNER plays the HMV Store, Brighton on 12th May
CLOUD CONTROL plays the Corn Exchange, Brighton
RACHEL SERMANNI plays the The Green Door Store
JAMES VINCENT McMORROW plays an outdoor gig on Brighton Seafront with the peir in the background
A "flash-dance" broke out at a street gig in Brighton's Jubilie Square in Brighton
Le Corps Mince de Françoise (LCMDF) plays The Corn Exchange, Brighton
Guillemots play the Komedia, Brighton
How will I do financially? Only time will tell all I will say is that a day after the festival I received a request for photographs of approx 8 bands, I had shot 3 of them….
The Great Escape – Day 3: Marina and Tiff
After the aches and pains of the morning I decided that for the Saturday I would shoot only the bands that I would enjoy shooting and who’s photos would be more likely to sell. Also, I knew the headline act – “Marina and the Diamonds” would be packed and not easy to get into.
The first act I needed to shoot was Tiffany Page who was playing at the tiny Volks on the seafront. I got down there vary early to size the place and the lights up and caught the end of their sound check. Took a couple of snaps and then enjoyed the short set by Jaakko & Jay – “Acoustic Punk” very entertaining.
Photographing at small place like this and getting there early means you usually get a chance to make contact with the band and this gives a little more interaction. I’m really pleased with the results given the space and the light I had.
Next I wandered down to Concorde 2 and watched a couple of support acts before Marina, who was headlining. My gut instincts were right and as the time drew near for her performance; the venue and the pit filled. I couple of guys I knew did not make it in (The pit was also reduced as Channel 4 were also filming and had 2 cameras in the pit). I however had the centre of the pit – prime position.
All in all the perfect evening, 2 good shoots with a little time to relax and enjoy some music… (and a beer too!)
The Great Escape….
As I write this I ache all over and am absolutely shattered (it’s 10AM on the Saturday morning). 2 days of The Great Escape Festival have gone and we are now into the final day..
For those of you who do not know TGE is a “new music” festival covering 3 days in 24 venues throughout Brighton. This means covering it is a case of running (ok, brisk walking) from venue to venue and trying to clamber to the front to get a position from which to shoot (many of the smaller venues do not have a “pit”).
Yesterday evening I shot 8 acts in the space of 4 hours starting with a special outdoor gig by The Futureheads at Audio and finishing with “I blame CoCo”. Between these there were a number of acts, some I have to say were quite poor but one I really liked was “Think about life”, a Canadian band with a lot of beat and life…
Now I need another cup of tea and to plan todays marathon..