My first Official Photographer Role

I had the opportunity to be an “official photographer” at the Priddy Folk Festival this July. For those not in the know, it’s a yearly festival held in Priddy, Somerset to celebrate all things folk. Set up in the early 1990s, it has grown in size over the years and attended by folk lovers from far and wide. For more details, see the Priddy website: http://www.priddyfolk.org/

About 7 of us from our local photography group (Focus on Photography), led by Stuart Baynes, were given the role of official photographers over the weekend event. On each shift, Stuart sent us out with our photographic requirements to make sure we fulfilled the brief. I quite enjoyed walking around with my lanyard stating I was a photographer. It made people assume I knew what I was doing – which was a nice change!

In our brief, we were tasked with this:

…”document the event showing public and performers, family’s enjoying the Green, vendors selling, revellers drinking/eating/dancing/holding hands/playing/buying/listening/joining in + overall views of the venue (2x fields), the camping site, the Queen Vic and Priddy in general”

I can tell you now, capturing the audience and performers in the same shot is tricky! I have some with just the audience, but then it looks out of context (see images below). Or a shot that looks good, only to discover a member of the audience staring right at the camera and losing some of the spontaneity of the image.

After a despondent first hour, where I couldn’t get my photo mojo, I finally think I got my grove. In turns out I prefer the detail and potentially the closer shots that others might not see. However, I was asked to take formal style photos of the stall holders, for documentary purposes. Now I don’t naturally have the gift to chat to strangers, but I think the official lanyard helped me be a bit bolder approaching people. Some photographers have that ability to put people at ease, whereas I’ve not learnt that skill yet so some awkwardness came through in the photos.

It turns out, across the weekend slot, we collectively took about 3500 photos. Poor Stuart has since sat (probably glued to his computer chair) for the last couple of days, filtering through those images. Deleting the blurred, whilst cropping and enhancing the good images. He has now whittled the images down to 383 which will be passed onto the event organisers, so a roughly 10% return. All in all, that’s not bad.

I’ll leave you with my favourite shot. For some reason, it’s this lady with her umbrella. I know it’s a bit squiffy in terms of the horizon, but I like it!

For more of my images from the Priddy Folk Festival, please see the Gallery page.