deadmau5 headlining on day 1. Lots of mice in the crowd.
Roskilde is very very organized. To get into the front you have to queue up for hours. It’s a shambolic form of organization, and somehow it really works.

Arctic Monkeys on the Orange stage (main stage). The stage has quite a history, having been designed originally for the Rolling Stones’ summer tour of 1976.

The crowds always have lots of fun, even if you are all the way at the back. 

The very energetic, theatrical Lykke Li, this year’s Florence + the Machine. 

Take care of each other

And take care of each other they do. This is in front of a pond/trash pit, but somehow they are still having a relaxing time.

This girl was shaving this boy’s head, halfway through the shaver ran out of battery. But it doesn’t matter, no-one will look at him twice at Roskilde.

A dedicated British camper. 

It wouldn’t be a major European rock festival without all the rain. Copenhagen got some of the heaviest rainfall in recorded history and the place I was staying (along with most of my belongings) were flooded in 6 inches of water. Luckily Roskilde didn’t get as much rain, it would have probably caused the cancellation of the Festival.

Protection from the rain.

Singing/Dancing in the rain.

Kissing in the rain

Laughing in the rain.
The Danes, with their slightly less conservative approach to nakedness, enjoy a good bit of streaking in the rain.

The end. See you next year.

For the rest of my Roskilde 2011 images, have a look at the collection on the Getty Images site

You might also like: Roskilde 2010, Glastonbury 2011

I was hired on a dream assignment – to shoot Glastonbury Festival. But not to shoot music or stage performances, but atmosphere around the festival. The dream lasted until around the third hour of fighting, yes FIGHTING with the mud. I was shooting for the great guys over at Festival Annual.

Glastonbury is conceivably the largest rock music festival on earth. 175,000 people went this year. It’s the largest single purpose site I’ve ever seen for anything. Considering that many cities in UK are smaller than 175,000 people, it’s quite something. Glastonbury is a messy, wonderful temporary city. Everyone is there to have a good time. And the atmosphere is amazing.

But Glastonbury really is so much more than a music festival. It is a celebration of culture savoured like no other.

Like this little disco tent with funky light, you find these little places all over the site.

And people just hanging out on a hill overlooking the site at sunset

The site is entirely eclectic, from chill-out areas.

Charming camp sites…

Kid’s play areas

Busking…

…and even a dry cinema for the small and big kids.

Of course one of the big challenges is the mud. The ground at Glastonbury is made of clay, which turns into a very sticky mud that literally pulls the shoes off people’s feet.

Resulting in lovely scenes like the ‘Wellie Graveyard), the place protective footwear goes to die.

Just a bit of toilet atmosphere…

Glastonbury also has some very established night life. Because of the distance from any large urban population, curfews aren’t quite the same.

The party lasts all night. 

Even in some of the clubs, like ‘Fish and Tits’ in the Shangri-La area. Pole dancers and all sorts. 

Or Downlow NYC, a retro gay club which is part of the ‘party area’, Block 9. 

But Glastonbury wouldn’t be Glasto without all the performance art. The ‘Spider’ show at the Arcadia field attracts a lot of attention.

The Pyramid stage during U2’s set.

The end!

To see more, head over to the Festival Annual Facebook page. My images will be part of their annual book documenting festival culture. It will be out in the Autumn.

You can follow my work on twitter or stay in touch via facebook.

I photographed the festival for the very cool bunch of people at Festival Annual. They publish a yearly anthology of music festivals around the British isles; a genius view into the UK’s Music Festival subculture. This is where a lot of music, entertainment and fashion trends emerge. This is where many an adolescent story to be told, but the pictures speak for themselves in that regard. There’s over 40 of my images in the book, it’s available here and if you use promo code ‘FELIX’ during checkout, you get a nice little discount. It makes a great christmas present for anyone who loves music, concerts, gigs or festivals.

Below a sampling of some of my images, much more in the book.

The book:

The back cover of the book includes one of my images (the centre one) as well as some gorgeous double page spreads of some of my images:

The individual pages are very nicely laid out, each with a theme that shows a specific aspect of the festival.

The book also features Reading photography by my friend Oscar May as well as coverage of all the other major music festivals in the country.

If you like this, why not check out the frontpage which has portfolios or check into the newsletter page, which allows you to browse back through recent projects.

For regular updates, join me on Facebook or twitter.

I went to Denmark to cover the amazing 40th Roskilde Music Festival. Roskilde is a small town 1/2 hour outside of Copenhagen. The festival is held on a farm that is repurposed for the festival.

As one of Europe’s top three festivals, attended by over 110,000 people, Roskilde has a reputation for a laid back attitude of fun and as Thorsten Overgaard said ‘lots of dust, beautiful girls and neanderthal men’.

My highlights were Muse, Florence + the Machine and Biffy Clyro. Prince also put on a spectacular show. I jostled for space in the press pit with many other photographers to photograph these bands:

Muse – British prog rock awesomeness
Biffy Clyro – Scottish rockers
Florence + The Machine – British folk done right
Alice in Chains – influential 90’s rock (US)
Bad Lieutenant – formerly New Order (UK)
Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni BA – world music (Mali)
CV Jørgensen – singer-songwriter (Denmark)
Den Sorte Skole (The Black School) – Copenhagen’s 3 piece DJ set – amazing (Denmark)
Efterklang – up and coming atmospheric pop-rock (Denmark) – watch for these guys
Gorillaz – Damon Albarn’s trip hop project (UK)
Jack Johnson – chilled Hawaiian folk (US)
Julian Marley – Bob Marley’s son – rasta reggae (UK)
Kasabian – indie rock (UK)
Pavement – indie Rock (US)
Patti Smith – singer-songwriter – legendary ‘godmother of punk’ – (US)
Pendulum – electronic rock (Australia)
The Prodigy – electronic dance (UK)
The Temper Trap – alternative rock (Australia)
Vampire Weekend – fun indie rock (US)

To see all the images of the above bands, look on Getty Images here.

YouTube version for iOS users:

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He plays the Ukulele and Guitar and has a neat assortments of them. I didn’t know what to expect from the shoot, but we had a blast, tried out some nifty (but fairly subtle) lighting and got some nice relaxed and cool images. We had a bit of a photographers dream moment when I was trying to describe my vision for the shoot, I was trying to verbalize what I had in mind, realized I couldn’t and instead just hummed the tune from Jason Mraz’s ‘I’m Yours’. Kevin immediately understood and we shot away. When that happens, you know the shoot will turn out great:

If you like this, you might want to check out the portfolio section and the front page

]]> http://www.felixkunze.com/blog/2010/kevins-ukulele-guitar/feed/ 0 http://www.felixkunze.com/blog/2009/kevin-and-his-g/ http://www.felixkunze.com/blog/2009/kevin-and-his-g/#comments Sat, 12 Dec 2009 04:47:50 +0000 felixkunze http://www.felixkunze.com/?p=5956 I shot Florida Guitar & Ukulele musician Kevin Patrick a couple of weeks ago. I used some sneaky lighting techniques to achieve this light, it’s amazing what you can achieve with just one speedlight.

I’ve seen Juliette perform several times and have fallen in love with her work. Be assured, the album is on my musical procurement list.

The plan had been to edit the photos, include captions and help paint a picture of what Juliette is like off stage and on. But the more I worked to figure out what photos to include here, the more I realized that Juliette is too expressive to be diminished by photo captions.

As always, just click on the large photo below to advance to the next one.
Big versions of these photos are here.

Were you there? Which act was your favorite?

At the request of Festival Director, James, I left the press pit for brief moments to capture a little bit of atmosphere. We had a bunch of rain that was most intense during Gary Numan and Ash’s sets but let off for Feeder. The crowd were soaking wet but still enjoyed themselves. The atmosphere was palpable. The festival site consisted of 3 stages on the beach. Scenic.

These images are a little snapshot of what I captured on the day. A bunch of band stuff will be in my portfolio at some point soon and I have a bunch more atmosphere that I’m not publishing as yet. I went for a variety of styles to communicate the variety of what the festival had on offer.

I for one hope the festival has an even better year in 2010, I can’t wait to hear what the line-up will be. If you were there, let me know in the comments below.