// August 6th, 2009 // 3 Comments » // Music, Photography, Weekend
Suikerrock has been over for a couple of days now but I’m not fully recovered yet. Let’s start at the beginning: Friday.
Friday.
Up got up early, all excited and psyched to go. We had to be there at 19h and I had planned to go a bit early so i could set up my laptop and have look around. Dropped of my stuff and together with one of the other photographers, I walked around the festival- and crew area. We also had a look at where and what we would be working with over the weekend. The idea was that, after each band/artist, we’d come back to the crew-room and that we’d make a selection of our own shots, then processed that selection very quickly (brightness/contrast/crop) and uploaded the shots here. Problem 1: the machine we had to do this one was a rather old windows-machine that lacked the RAM to process more then 1 photo at the some time…Not a joy to work with.
By then it was 19h and time to meet up with the rest of the crew. On Friday, I was assigned to the main-stage: Lady Linn, The Scabs, Simple Minds and Was het nu 80, 90 of 2000.
It was my first time shooting a concert in daylight and the first time I was front-stage to take photos so I was quite excited and a bit nervous. But it turned out ok!
We called it a day/night around 2am and I headed for the Cultural Center nearby, where the volunteers could sleep. I was very tired but sleep didn’t come soon…Apparently some of the other people there weren’t very tired and decided to keep you rest of us up until 6am in the morning…. After that, I think I got 3 or 4 hours of sleep, was up again by 11h.
Saturday.
Before going to the crew-zone, I passed by a pharmacy to get ear-plugs (had forgotten mine at home, no surprise there). Then to the crew-room to process friday’s shots for myself (importing into Lightroom, backing them up and making a first selection)
On saturday I had to be at the side-stage all day, but it started later the the main-stage, so I got to shoot the first 2 gigs at the main and headed for the side-stage. The bands there were much much smaller, the mood was more relaxed, less rushed. Later in the day, I hopped over to the main-stage for Anouk (couldn’t let her get away!). After the first 3 songs, the ‘boss’ asked who wanted to join him on the church-tower…Everyone was kinda standing around, letting someone else go, so I went for it 
. It was a great experience, got some good photos and got to use a Nikon 400mm F2.8 VR lens (a loaner from Nikon). After Anouk, I headed back to the side-stage for cover 2 more DJ-gigs. Around 2am, I headed for my new sleeping place! 2 friends (Evie and Nel) were stay there, they had room left in there tent and they offered me a place to sleep. Bless them
When we woke up on sunday-morning around 11h, it was raining…Not so good. We waited around a bit, showered, had breakfast and waited for the rain to stop. I left the girls and headed for the main-stage, had to be on time. We (another photographer, Julie and myself) shot the first gig in the rain without protection on our camera/lens. After 2 songs we headed back to the crew-room and make rain-coats for our lenses. And then it stopped raining
For the rest of the day, we had good weather and got some good photos. When the last gig was over, we came together in the crew-room, backed up all our images, said goodbyes and headed our separate ways. Since I had all my gear (camera, lenses, laptop, backups) with me, I headed straight for our tent. Around 3am, the girls woke me up again and we stayed up till 6h30, talking and laughing. Good times
And thank god I didn’t have to work on monday (actually, thank @benverlinden for that, he gave up his day off, so I could have mine). We got up again around 11h, packed up the ‘4 seconds’-tent in about 20 minutes, got everything in the Evie’s car and off we were, Suikerrock was over.
Thank you Suikerrock, thank you Jullie and thank you Evie and Nel!
