On a Thursday morning in March my camera bag and I returned to Pontins in Prestatyn, the venue for Hard Rock Hell, to cover Hammerfest II for Pure Rawk. After a surprisingly mellow train journey, I arrived in Prestatyn mid-afternoon, and settled myself into the chalet to get ready for three nights and two days of metal.

Here are just a few of the photos I shot during the festival – the whole set (200+) is linked from Pure Rawk’s gallery page

Back on December 3rd I headed up to the unlikely venue of Pontins at Prestatyn for Hard Rock Hell III.
We arrived after a bum-numbing car journey from Kent via Croydon at 00.45 on Friday, organised the Pure Rawk chalet (and by organised I mean located all of the food and alcohol and shoved it in the kitchen), spent a couple of hours chilling out and talking, then fell into a slumber, to be awakened bright and early with the rock calling us. On this occasion I was shooting for Festivalphoto and Pure Rawk, which meant a couple of 13 hour shooting days to ensure that I caught as many bands as I needed to. Tiring but great fun – HRH is easily one of my favourite events – really friendly, always a great line-up, and a comfy bed awaiting no more than a five minute stagger from the entertainment – what more do you need?

I love having an excuse to go back to Nottingham – I spent happy years there as a student and have nothing but good memories of the place.
The venue for TrashStock 2009 was Seven – a cosy venue with the added bonus of an extra bar downstairs and an outdoor area complete with barbecue and sunny weather!
Although I had my camera with me, I wasn’t reeeaaallly there to take photos, so was decidedly lazy other than the odd snap here and there (until Ginger played and I gave in to the temptation of the fisheye lens).

Nix of Pure Rawk published a live, as it happened review from her DJ booth, which is a much better read than anything I could come up with. So I won’t.

After Buckcherry I was dying for a cold drink, and had a breakfast break whilst tracking down the troops and figuring out how and when we were going to meet later in the day.
The rest of the day ran like this for me:

Killing Joke (Apollo stage)

Lamb of God (Apollo stage)

Feeder (Saturn stage)

Limp Bizkit (Apollo stage)

Mastodon (Saturn stage)

Alice in Chains (Saturn stage)

and Avenged Sevenfold (Saturn stage)

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Musically, Alice in Chains were the highlight for me,
photographically though, Avenged Sevenfold had the edge. The lighting had been great on the Saturn Stage all weekend, but it was as if the lighting guys were wearing sunglasses and turned the lights up more to compensate – they were so vivid! When you’ve got a band as audience-friendly as Avenged Sevenfold it makes taking a duff photo quite challenging, and I was happier with these pics than any of the others from the weekend.

I wasn’t on the list for Metallica, so photographically pretty much called it a day after Avenged Sevenfold, save for a few festival nighttime shots.

Following Thunder and effectively headlining Bohemia on the Saturday were The Wildhearts. Stephen and I had to wait patiently for enough of the crowd to evacuate the tent for a beer break to enable us to get back in, luckily this didn’t take too long and he was able to join Jase at the front while I sat down and waited to go in to the pit. Once in, it was evident that things were running a bit behind and that there were a few equipment problems, however the lights finally went down and the band burst on to the stage with “Vanilla Radio”

I’m not sure what was going on with the lighting by this point in the evening – what with the backlighting and the solid blocks of colour and someone setting the smoke machine to camouflage it could all have got a bit stressy, but as usual I had a great time bouncing around the pit, singing along (sorry, security people!) and going for my shots. Unfortunately security decided to turf out photographers after 2 songs instead of the three we’d been told (I hope it was nothing to do with my singing), so my plans to head back to the other side of the stage for more pictures of Scott and Ritch were cruelly thwarted!

I chose to not make an effort to get more shots from the crowd, though, preferring to put everything away and just enjoy myself for the rest of the set. 45 minutes, unfortunately, went by in a flash – as frontman Ginger said, they were just warming up when they had to finish.
Setlist:
Vanilla Radio
Everlone
The Revolution Will Be Televised
Suckerpunch
Carmelita
Sick of Drugs
Jackson Whites
OCD
My Baby is a Headfuck
I Wanna Go Where the People Go

After the gig we all piled out of the tent and stayed around chatting for a while, calling it a night and heading back to the car at around 2.15. Home by 4, a few hours’ sleep and back to do it all again on Sunday!

Sunday morning came around very quickly. 4 hours sleep in a proper bed did the job though, , and I dread to think what a grumpy moo I’d have been had I spent the night in a wet tent! The journey back to Knebworth was pretty smooth, and by 10.45 we were back on site. Unfortunately there was a bit of a ‘none shall pass’ situation going on at the entrance to the press area – security had decided that it didn’t open until 12 (despite the first band being on at 11.20!). So what started as a leisurely stroll became a quick dash with heavy backpack through the arena to infiltrate the press bit from the other side. I got there just in time (and slightly hot and bothered) to be escorted to the main stage for Buckcherry.

11.20 is, it has to be said, an utterly uncivilised time for a rock show. Most of the punters are still trying to drag themselves in varying states of hangover out of their tents, bands have a greater than usual need for dark glasses…to be honest I was *so* not awake at this stage that I can’t tell you how the band sounded, I can only show you what they looked like!

Now, at this point I will say a bit about the Sonisphere main stage. This is the kind of gig where height is definitely an advantage. The stage was fecking huge! Some of the more savvy photographers, veterans of many such events, had stepladders. I in my vertically challenged state chose to step back and zoom more, or shoot from the side at an angle. Mainly you have to rely on the performers working the stage and moving far forward enough that you can see more than just head and shoulders. Drummer shots are also even more difficult than usual! Buckcherry’s drummer Xavier was the only drummer that I could even see on the Apollo stage that day.
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Last weekend was pretty epic – the first UK Sonisphere festival at Knebworth. I won’t bore you with all the details, but suffice to say I was shooting a bit from the arena on Saturday daytime, and (thanks to the lovely people at Outside) from the pit on Saturday night and Sunday. Saturday was more of a social day for me, with loads of friends on site.
I have a few pics of Anthrax and Heaven and Hell from Saturday, I haven’t posted any as I didn’t manage to bag myself a very good spot – for Anthrax I was near the front, but blocked most of the time by the video crane.
The real treat of Saturday was Airbourne – I’ve been wanting to see these guys for ages, and they made standing in the rain something to grin about rather than whinge about. Frontman Joel’s legendary climbing antics this time took the form of scaling the stage speaker supports (in the rain, of course) and swinging from the truss before coming back to earth.

I was fortunate enough to be in the front row on the right side of the stage for this and caught the whole thing. The pics look a bit washed out – literally, they were! It was rainy, miserable, grey, and my camera was under my jacket between shots – I’m not tempted to ‘punch up’ these pictures as they show it how it was.

Early evening I sought shelter in the press room to dry out a bit, and sat on the floor drinking Monster Energy to revive myself (though no Loca Moca of Mean Bean in sight- boo!) and watching some of the interviews.

After main stage headliners Linkin Park started, I was able to arrange to shoot the last two bands in the Bohemia tent that night, Thunder (playing their last ever gig) and The Wildhearts.
The tent was packed for Thunder – so packed in fact that when I nipped out for a quick loo break just over halfway through the set, I couldn’t get back in!

I bumped into my stepson who had the same problem, so we stayed outside the tent to listen and spent the final song (I love you more than rock and roll) dancing around. Air cowbell may have been played though nobody can prove this

Anyway, from what I did manage to see, the band was on fire. Farewell gigs could, I imagine, be quite melancholy affairs, but this was a full-on party.

To be continued…