Glastonbury 2024

Another year, another Glastonbury. Last year I vowed that going forward I wanted to enjoy the festival more and have less rushing about. So, as I promised myself 12 months ago, My colleagues and I traveled down a day earlier than in previous years – on the Wednesday and headed back on the Monday morning. It made a huge difference to our schedule.

Simply, I spent Wednesday afternoon and all of Thursday wandering the site with the X100 for company (occasionally adding the X-H2 for variation), inducing much eye-rolling by one of my colleagues by adding the Star filter occasionally.

These wandering images were processed from the RAW’s, utilising the latest DXO/NIK to bring back some of the shadow detail and colour.

The next morning, upon arrival at the site (we stay off site, I need sleep, I feel I can achieve anything if I have enough sleep), we stayed by the entrance to photograph more arrivals (an essential part of the festival cover).

Once I had a set of plain images, I engaged the ND filter and dropped the ISO to bring the shutter speed down to a speed that would require panning to bring movement into the images.

The afternoon including a walk around the Shangri-La area for which I added the X-H2 and the 100-400 to get some different perspectives. All the time I was carrying the X100, photographing the fashion around the festival.

The music starts proper on the Friday and over the next 3 days I seemed to spent more time at the Other Stage than any other.

Its not just about the acts when in the pit, photographing the artists….

I did shoot a number of acts on the Pyramid Stage especially on the Sunday

Although I did not photograph any of the Pyramid Stage Headliners; there was so many lists restricting the photographers this year and so my colleague, who shoots way more music than I do, was “our” shooter for them.

I took the opportunity to make some images I had not made so much over the years. For Dua-Lipa I headed into the crowd to get a perspective on the size of it.

I was shooting the crowd for a few minutes with the X100 before I realised the ND was still engaged. Yes, I should have noticed but it has caught me out a few times now, taking a little while to realise that it is not as dark as I thought it was. If there was one thing I would change with the camera at the moment it would be to make the ND icon a bit more prominent in the view finder.

For the Saturday night, I headed up the hill behind the Park Stage to make some wide shots of the whole festival as the night fell and Coldplay headlined.

This last image above was shot in RAW , processed through DXO Pure Raw and NIK. I have a copy of it as an A2 print hanging in my open studio for sale. The detail & resolution is stunning, I will be creating a limited run of A1 & A2 prints.

As press photographers, we have a secure, manned lock-up meaning we can leave most of our kit by the press office every night. That meant I was walking out each night just carrying a few X-H2 batteries and the X100VI , taking me back to 10 years ago when I used to walk out making pictures with the MK1 X100.

I mentioned previously how photography is a creative pursuit, with the use of panning techniques and the star filter I am wondering if I am bordering on the naff.

What do you think?

Let me know, too much? Too twee?

J