This little festival, literally at the top of a mountain in Wales, UK, is held every July and has become bigger and better each year. This is the second time here for me, both times to primarily shoot video footage for Vega (who were here to perform on the middle day of the three day festival).
I'm going to confess to a huge mistake I made the first time I came here (mainly because the band still rib me about it and took great pleasure in telling my daughter, also here to shoot too, all about it). The first time I was here Vega had brought me to shoot video for one song in their set to be the main footage in a planned music video. I shot the song and, just as they finished their set, I accidentally pressed the shutter button on the camera. For some silly reason I decided to delete this rogue image and so deleted the last file on the memory card. However, when I looked at the screen the camera was showing a live view image - I hadn't shot a rogue picture at all, I had simply flicked the switch to go to live view and I'd mistaken the sound of this as that of the shutter firing! I knew immediately that I had deleted the one file I had been brought here to get.
I'm not ashamed to admit it, I threw up - right there behind the stage. Anyway, I had the good sense to remove the card immediately and replace it with another. It took two days but I managed to recover the deleted video file using recovery software. Now, I never delete any files from the memory card! Lesson learned.
No such mishaps this time (and having Elara Christie here to shoot additional footage was an extra insurance policy too). After the shoot for Vega I went on to capture photos of the other bands on the bill. First up, The Von Hertzen Brothers:
Are they really brothers?
As you can seel, I used a Fisheye lens for both of the shots above. It's a 15mm fisheye which, on a full-frame camera doesn't give too much distortion. As the festival had provided a catwalk for the artists I knew I was likely to be able to get some very close exposure and so the fisheye was the main lens of choice.
Next up was Blues Pills and The Answer. For both bands I shot with a standard 24-70mm lens.
Blues Pills
The Answer, asking a question.
The headline act on the day was Thunder and just as night fell it was great to see a full lighting rig put to good use.
It's that fisheye again.
Although Ebbw Vale is around 300 miles from home It's such a well run festival that I would come back again and again. The press area is very well run - no issues with accreditation at all and, even without it, cameras are allowed on site anyway. I noticed that the area around the stage emptied after each band so anyone wanting to get some great photographs of some big bands would have no problem at all getting a good viewpoint, even without a pit-pass.
Thank you Steelhouse Festival, it was a pleasure.