Local music festivals have a variety of talented artists from all genres of music depending on the particular festival’s target audience. Very often artists are happy to travel from far afield to places such as Hallaton in the East Midlands to perform to their fans. It is a fantastic privilege for me to be able to capture photographs and videos of sets as an official photographer or videographer. If someone can’t make it to the actual gig, they can re-live the moments and be there virtually if the content is on social media video platforms.
Many festivals raise money for charities and during the current Covid-19 pandemic a lot of my videos have raised money for charities, as many of the bands I film have not been able to do full gigs and have posted online.
In 2017 I began this part of my career by photographing the LatinoSound stage at the family-friendly Green Meadows Festival in Elton, near Oundle. The organisers liked my photographs so much they asked me officially to photograph the main stage too, where the headliners were The Sugar Hill Gang, Stereo MCS and Reverend & The Maker.
I repeated the gig in 2018 when the main acts were The Correspondents, The Hoosiers and Craig Charles. The festival’s main charity was the Teenage Cancer Trust.
Loughborough is home to Wicked Hathern Festival located in the rural village of Hathern. Funds raised for the festival go back into their bonfire fireworks evening night. State of the art sound and lighting are spread out across three stages. A variety of headliners such as The Feeling covered the main stage in 2018 and Dovecote comedian Joel Dommet laughed out the packed tent.
Click here to watch my promo video of Wicked Hathern.
HallatonFest is another family-friendly music festival located in the beautiful countryside village of Hallaton, close to Market Harborough in Leicestershire. At the Fox Inn there’s lots of tasty food to pick from too. Each year donations are raised for the local Air Ambulance with the stall at the entrance usually holding a raffle.
Unfortunately, due to this year’s circumstances, the August festival could not go ahead but next year there are plans for a mini HallatonFest to help raise funds for an even bigger one in August 2022.
From 2019 HallatonFest decided to use me as their official videographer to capture the overall atmosphere of the festival. LuxTechnical provided the power needed to run the festival, staging, state of the art lighting and sound so it was not your usual beer festival style set up.
In overall conclusion, I love taking photos but shooting promo videos gives me the greatest sense of satisfaction as it shows what’s going on in addition to the bands, from fair rides to children’s activities such as laser tag. There is plenty more to a festival than music and comedy.
Video music: Invincible yet invisible, written and performed by Eva Rose
