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This (above) is Scott Grier shooting Grace Potter (of Grace Potter and the Nocturnals) out in the VIP section of the festival. She was ’super’ friendly and willing to play along with any publicity (not to mention very attractive and apparently quite talented, I wrangled her brilliantly!). We had to set up under a tent and then decided to use the outside of Ben Harper’s trailer for a backdrop. the images came out great, and can be seen here. Scott made the best out of a bad situation and got some really nice work from the cloudy, rainy day.

And here begins ‘Ben Harper Day,’ where all I got were shots of him all day. This one I stole while Scott was shooting him for Getty. I actually like it a lot and am happy that I thought to shoot closer. Ben was also really nice and willing to join the publicity train. Cat Power was not very willing, and actually avoiding committing to a shoot by using the ‘age old’ excuse of “later.” The second time I asked, she tried to stick her French Bulldog on me, and then promised a post-show-shoot. Denied!

Check these shots out on the link above from Scott. He did an amazing job with such little stuff.

The bonus of being at these type of events is the opportunity to shoot a little yourself (plus - meet cool musicians, plus - meet cool photographers, plus - earn plenty of money, plus… well you get the message). I only shot two bands, but I shot a lot of images of them (many back focused and blurry). Scott lent me his Canon 1D Mark III and his 70-200 2.8 IS for this concert, and it rocked. This is shot at 800 ISO and looks cleaner than most cameras at 200 ISO. I truly love to shoot live shows, and wish it a) payed better and b) was more accessible more often ie. payed better!

Ben Harper was great. I need to reinvest in his music again. He rolled in to the VIP area with wife Laura Dern and his family. They were all backstage watching their daddy rock his little socks off. The rain had stopped and he played the first big show of the day, even though audience numbers were less than half of Saturday.

The biggest let down after two days of Radiohead live is one day of not Radiohead live. I decided during Jack Johnson’s set to delete all his music from my ipod. Not because he sucked, in fact he was actually great. I just realised how mediocre he is compared to Thom and the boys.

All in all it was an amazing few days, full of expensive junk food, cool slightly famous bands and some really cool people to work with. My advice for aspiring concert photographers is to not bother, or win the lottery and follow them all. I also met my first ‘professional-groupie,’ called Bridget. She wanted to know all the bands, and spent plenty of time following them around in a small bikini and miniskirt. She would have wrangled way more people than me had she been with Scott!