Concert Photography Plus

A Bit About The Festival

One in a series of festivals run by the promoters of 'Hard Rock Hell', although in the case of most of the progressive rock bands playing it seems a bit of a misnoma. Perhaps Hairy Rock Heaven? Or in the case of the A.O.R. stage, Hair Rock ... Heaven/Hell? Overall it was a great event and the organisers should be applauded for putting it on - yes there were a few little issues, but from a standing start I was impressed!

The festival, which ran over two days, included two Prog stages and two AOR stages with all the usual supporting paraphernalia. In most respects it was successful from a fans perspective - plenty to choose from, always something worth seeing; the only ocasional problem was choosing which stage to go to. You'll rarely get perfect sound throughout with quick changeovers and limited soundchecks of bands with very different requirements, but generally it was pretty good; what sound issues there were, were quickly ironed out. Better that than lengthy gaps trying to achieve perfection in an imperfect venue.

But it was cold, very COLD on the Prog stages and it would be dishonest not to mention that - but after a while everyone got used to it. Lots of lighting, although too heavily front centre. The second Prog stage was even colder and in far too small an area with no actual stage, and really needed much better lighting (so very few pics of that), but at least there was a second stage. It would be easy not to have bothered - so let's see the positives!

The aim was to see as much of the Prog stages as possible, but there are a few AOR bands here too helpfully operating elsewhere in the complex (including Skid Row, Tesla, FM, etc).

Normally the second stage photos wouldn't have made it to this site, largely taken at 6400 ISO (a few at 12,800!) but they are included here for completeness.

Festival Photographs