Citadel

July 28, 2015 Events 0 Comments

Debut festival Citadel touched down on London’s Victoria Park the day after Lovebox, on Sunday 19th July. Having had a spot of rain the night before, we were lucky with the weather and it remained sunny throughout resulting in a great day for festival photography.

I took my big lens, and the 70-200mm fared really well given the abundance of space between subjects and background. Although not the most colourful crowd, revellers gave me some nice scenes to capture and the evening light gave the entire site a lovely glow thanks to the good weather;

Getting a press pass gave me ample opportunity to get up close and personal with some of my favourite artists too. Bears Den were a lot more animated than I thought and their set resulted in some great shots! Music photography is one of my biggest passions and when a band performs as well as these guys, and I’m able to see how they interact as well as the chemistry between them, it just adds to my overall experience…

Next up was Nick Mulvey, one of my all-time faves 🙂 Having seen him a couple of times before I knew we’d be bowled over and he did nothing short but send us weak at the knees. His is probably one of the albums I listened to most, so I found it pretty hard at times staying still enough to get the shots whilst singing and bobbing along in a fuzzy state of bliss… Completely unassuming but extremely photogenic, Nick plays to the crowd and from a photographers point of view, is always a massive bonus when an artist interacts with his fans:

Finally Ben Howard proved himself a worthy headliner, with a 90-minute extended set combining tracks from his current and first album. Seeming somewhat introvert in performance, he took a while to warm up before he finally began looking up from his guitar. I couldn’t help but smile at the sea of clicks all around me every time the pit of photographers caught a glimpse of his blue eyes, and there was a quiet but decidedly mutual murmur of approval as soon as he stood up from his initial seated position. Thankfully he played a more varied set compared to his down-tempo hour at Glastonbury, and I thoroughly enjoyed being able to shoot him at such close proximately being a huge fan of both albums. In stark contrast to Nick Mulvey, Ben sings for himself and his facial expressions tell many a tale of the the pain and anguish from the lyrics of his songs. Which as you can imagine from a photographers perspective, often makes for not the most attractive of expressions! Here are my favourite shots anyway, I hope you enjoy 🙂