A candid look behind the curtain...
One of the privileges of providing music pictures to the Portsmouth News is I get to work at Victorious Festival.
I still have to pinch myself this incredible festival is on my doorstep, it is clearly the greatest thing to happen to the Portsmouth music scene.
I have been lucky to attend every festival, from the humble beginnings of the first two in Portsmouth dockyard to the present day.
There have been many highlights over the years including The Prodigy, which I imagine was like going 12 rounds with a boxer when you are only a few feet from the stage in the photo pit, and Flaming Lips, who were utterly bonkers.
A real spine-tingling moment was seeing New Order play Love Will Tear Us
Apart – they were the first big band I photographed back in 1982 while still at school.
I have been lucky to have several front pages, and there is still a sense of excitement when I rush down to the newsagents to see how many of my pictures make the cut.
My greatest achievement, without doubt, would be 2019’s front page picture of Professor Green, taken from the Castle Stage.
I am good friends with stage manager Dave Cronen, who allows me, from time to time, to take pictures standing on the stage as opposed to standing in the photo pit.
Normally I position myself at the back, but with Professor Green I spotted an opportunity to sneak behind some speakers at the front and with great timing he jumped down to the barrier
At this year’s Victorious Festival, music photographer Paul Windsor found some of the best acts lay away from the main stages.
and I got my photo.
The last couple of years I have mainly worked at the Castle Stage, which is fine by me, but since the organisers have moved the main stage back a further 200m, it’s an awfully long way back and forth to get to the press tent – which is next to the main stage – to file my pictures.
Requests for golf carts to ferry the photographers between the two stages, as they do at the Isle Of Wight Festival, have fallen on deaf ears.
However, it does mean I am closer to many of the smaller stages, which this year provided some of my highlights, including the afrobeat artist Florence Adooni from Ghana in the World Music Village, Molotov Jukebox on the Seaside Stage and the Southsea Alternative Choir in the Comedy Tent playing their sixth set of the weekend.
Needless to say, I am already looking forward to next year. Part of the fun is predicting next year’s headliners.
Next year I think it would be The Chemical Brothers – can you imagine Right Here,
Right Now booming over Southsea Common?
I have been lucky to attend every festival, from the humble beginnings of the first two in Portsmouth dockyard