Top 5 bands at Burn It Down Festival 2019

I was asked back to photograph the second instalment of Burn It Down Festival in Torquay. Last years event Was brilliant. I got the chance to photograph bands like Mallory Knox, Dream State and Arcane Roots.

The line-up this year had some fantastic bands like Basement, Loathe, Haggard Cat, Black Peaks, Dream State loads of which I’ve had the pleasure of photographing before and a few new bands for me to photograph.

The event had three stages across three venues. The Signature Stage which was at The Apple & Parrot. The The main stage was the Jägermeister Stage which was at The Foundry.

I photographed over 15 bands over the day, varying from rock to hardcore to emo.

My top 5 favourite bands at Burn It Down are -

  • Black Peaks

  • Dream State

  • Mother Vulture

  • Haggard Cat

  • RXPTRS

After what can only be described as a highly successful second year for the South West festival, I am really looking forward to seeing what this festival had in store for the coming years.

Crooked Little Sons headline show at the Junction

On Friday 30th August, a punk rock band called Crooked Little Sons took over the Junction in Plymouth for their headline show.

With support from Disgraceland, The Electric Shakes and Jim Pope the night was set to be a good one!

Jim Pope opened the night with an acoustic punk set to warm the crowd up. His songs went from upbeat, melodic pop punk vibes to a slower tone with songs to pull at your heart strings. The set was varied and perfectly suited the tone of the night. Jim plays all over the county so if he’s in your local area, do yourself a favour and go and support him and his music!

The Electric Shakes and a 3 piece rock band from Dorset who’s sound can be summed up as noisy garage rock n roll. The band bought their high energy attitude to the stage and the crowd weren’t disappointed. The songs were catchy, loud and fast ; everything you want from a punk show! With moments of comedy gold in between songs, this band really know how to work a crowd.

The main support were a band called Disgraceland who are a 3 piece punk band from Devon. I’ve had the pleasure of working with this band a few times before and they never fail to put on an incredible show. The band are hectic and fantastic to watch. They bring their unapologetic political punk sound to the stage shining light on important messages about our society and their opinion on the current political climate.

Download their EP for free here!!!

Crooked Little Sons are a punk rock band who I’ve photographed countless times before and not once have the band failed to perform on top form. The band have a fantastic sound, which merges punk, rockabilly and rock n roll to form their unique style. Frontman Josh is one of my personal favourite musicians to photograph as he doesn’t hold back during his performances. The band have recently released their new single which they’re now in the process of touring.

See them live here!!!

Photographing Coheed & Cambria at ArcTanGent 2019

For the second year running I had the privilege of attending ArcTanGent festival. Looking at the stacked line-up, I knew this year would be a good one at that. Headlining the Arc stage (main stage for those who don’t know) on the first night were the mighty Coheed and Cambria.

Claudio Sanchez opening the show

As a long time fan of the band I was extremely excited to be able to photograph them as the band are on my bucket list of bands to photograph. The set had some insane lighting which I was able to utilise to the best of my abilities to get some pretty unique imagery. The stage lighting created some gorgeous silhouettes and shadows in the 3 images below.

For the images above I decided to edit them in such a way to highlight the intense silhouettes the stage lighting created. I used a mixture of self made presets on Lightroom to create a moodier look to the images but still keeping the colours bright in the coloured images, keeping the highlights bright in the black and white image.

As you can see in the photo above Claudio Sanchez was giving it his all during the performance. It’s one of the best things about being a live music photographer when you’re able to photograph a musician who’s passion comes through your lens, emotion like this just makes for better images and helps to tell more of a story.

For all the images on this post I used my Canon 5D Mark iii with either my 24-70mm 2.8 lens or my 70-200mm 2.8 lens. The low aperture enabled me to capture the colours well as it let in all the available light during the show. During post I kept the vibrancy bumped up to really saturate the colours in the images above as I didn’t want to lose any of them during editing. I always aim for my photos to look as true to the actual show as possible.

My favourite photo of the bands set

I wanted to get an image to highlight Claudios hair and show movement during their set. The photo above does both of these things. The highlights draw attention to his hair and the high shutter speed has captured the movement and kept the image sharp. The photo above is easily my favourite of their entire set as I love the attention to detail within it. The photo is minimal in its appearance but still keeps a high level of sharpness and detail when you really look into it. This images makes me super proud.