Taking photos at festivals

This weekend saw the Glastonbury music festival, which is just one of many music festivals taking place over the summer. These events make the perfect opportunities to take great photographs as you’re surrounded by ecstatic revellers, great lighting conditions, impressive stage constructions and mud, lots and lots of mud.

It shouldn’t be too hard therefore to take some memorable photos, photos that would look good printed on canvas and displayed on your wall. However, because the unpredictable nature of the British weather, and the all too predictable nature of the British mud, you probably don’t want to be taking your expensive SLR camera along to the festival with you.

You’re probably better off taking a cheaper camera, but ensure that it does allow you to adjust the shutter speed so you can at least have some control over your pictures.

Obviously you’ll want to try to take some photos of the performers on the stage; this after all is why people attend festivals in the first place. Try to get as close as possible to the stage for this as you’ll want the artist to be as large within your frame as possible. If you can’t get too close, don’t panic, you can easily make use of other aspects of the festival for great images.

For example, try taking pictures of the crowd, of their faces. The reactions of people to a performer can be extremely expressive and make for really interesting photographs. Also you could try to take pictures of the things that happen away from the stage, as they can sometimes be the more interesting things at festivals.