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Another year, another Splendour.Â
It’s been a hard few weeks, what with a combination of work, working weekends to make up for the days I’m having off to go to Splendour, gigs, next day photo deadlines and The Ashes, so instead of feeling well rested and full of energy for a hard weekend’s photographing I already feel exhausted. And I wish people around me would stop being ill with flu; this sore throat I’ve been developing over the last couple of days is an ominous sign.
I’ve worked out my plan for the weekend, a combination of things I really want to see/photograph (Jane’s Addiction, Gutter Twins, Specials. Flaming Lips) things that I’ll go and check out (i.e. Doves, White Lies, Friendly Fires) and things that as I’m there I might as well photograph to fill in time and for something to do (i.e. Hilltop Hoods, Little Birdy, Bluejuice, Yves Klein Blue. Actually, to be quite honest, about half the bands I’ve put in my plan…).Â
If there’s one upside it’s that my plan looks a lot less manic than last year’s Splendour, when I seemed to spend most of the weekend walking between the Big Top and the GW McLennan stage and ended up shooting 31 bands in total. This year it looks like being 22 bands, although no doubt this will change by the time the weekend is over, with bands starting on time (or not) and ease of movement between stages playing a major role in what gets photographed.
Unlike last year, when I was stressing slightly about a poorly camera that was having exposure meter issues and using my old film camera as back-up, I’ve actually got my old digital camera as back up, so hopefully I won’t be worrying too much about my camera dying on me.
As last year, I will be tweeting from the site, something that was very useful last year as an aide memoire for when it came to writing the more detailed blogs, and I’ll also be trying to upload a few photos from the day before on Sunday and Monday mornings to my Flick account.Â
I had planned to clear my backlog of blog posts and photos before this weekend but it wasn’t to be. Actually it ended up being nowhere near close to happening, so posts about The Middle East, Ladytron, Flipper, Deerhunter, Wolf & Cub, Washington, the Incremental Records Launch, the Plus One Records Showcase, Philadelphia Grand Jury and Timothy Carroll will have to wait a few more weeks.
Cool to read you’ll be tweeting the festival, I plan on doing the same. Not long now!
Oh how I wish I could have gotten to shoot that!!!
It was really fun last year. It’s a rare thing for me to get to do something as big as this but just a shame that the line-up has so much filler on it. After all this, if Jane’s Addiction pull out their recent photo contract and the Gutter Twins play in the dark I won’t be happy!
Hi Mike. Yep, the last few months since they announced it have flown by.
As I said in the post, i found tweeting really useful last year as by just having a 140 character review of each band I saw and being able to tweet all the other random stuff that was going on made it easier to recall other memories in the weeks after the festival when I was doing the more detailed blogs. Plus with all those walks between stages all weekend and the usual hanging around for the bands to start, it gave me something to do!
hi-liters?what are you, 10?
Have a blast Ed – I look forward to seeing your shots and hearing any tales from the weekend.
Oi Williams! You want these photos or what?btw I came 'this' close to colour coding with three different colours to signify 'definites', 'yeahs' and 'mehs'…
Nothing wrong with a bit of colour-coded highlighting, Ed! Seeing the program is making me wish I was there, even though I'd just be seeing the usual old suspects. You're not interested in Decoder Ring? Not gonna check out Grinners? You'd know in the first coupla songs if it was going to be worth sticking around for or not… And the beautiful girls! I haven't seen them for so long! Have a lovely weekend – how's the weather up there?