Mumbai means great food, like tikli (a cripsy potato basket filled with yogurt, chick peas, sweet chutney and various other vegetables and spices):
Mumbai also means terrible traffic – the worst I’ve ever experienced. You can spend hours in taxis going from one part of the city to another. I asked someone when rush hour ends. The answer? It doesn’t.
Traffic jams are the ideal opportunity to take pictures from the car. There’s not really much else to do when you’re stuck on the road
The Navratri Festival (a festival of dance) was going on while I was in Mumbai. It’s one of the major events in the Hindu calendar
The dancing is amazing. Apparently people start practicing months in advance
I don’t know how people can wear these outfits in the heat.. the dances take place outdoors and although it’s at night, the temperature is still at least 25C. Combine this with close to 100% humidity and we’re talking about some very uncomfortable conditions!
Juhu Beach
Man selling roses in the street:
I still can’t believe that kids sit on bikes like this:
Mumbai is a city of contrast – wherever you look:
Ganesh Hegde, an awesome choreographer (although it is fair to say I am slightly biased!), was directing a shoot for Hrithik Roshan (a Bollywood actor) for a reality dance show called Just Dance.
Shoots are laborious affairs – the tiniest scene can be shot over and over, and Ganesh being meticulous wants no less than perfection.
The costumes were made by the best costume designer in India, if not the world – Bipin Tanna (again I am biased but it’s the truth!)
I left soon after I took the above shot of Hrithik. Filming finished at 7am the following morning. You can see the end result here:
It’s interesting how it’s made to look like a live performance when it was shot a day before in the studio without an audience.
I saw her from a distance in the street playing with what looked like a doll. She was spinning it around and throwing and catching it, laughing the whole time. It’s only when I looked back on the pics I took that I realised it was a real baby!
I went on a bike ride which is basically a death wish. The concept of helmets is uncommon, but in the spirit of ‘when in Rome’, I decided to go with the flow, and take pictures – just to add to the danger.
I love how the driver is protected with a helmet, but not the kids
A games arcade – Indian style:
There’s a picture of a Hindu god in the middle, and the Om sign on the left. The equivalent in the UK would be a games arcade with Jesus and the cross in the windows. Very bizarre, but then, this is India : )
Bigg Boss is the Indian version of Big Brother:
It’s hugely popular and adverts were all over the place.
A bunch of 20 roses cost around 50 rupees which is around 70p.. so basically less than a £1 or $1. Madness.
Dusshera is a religious day and is also a national holiday in India. Cars were decorated with flowers:
On this day, people tend to bring statues of the goddess Durga to the sea to be immersed
They kept asking to be photographed : )
I also shot a couple of rolls of film. I’ll save them for another post, but here’s one that represents the Indian railways:
Bestival is quite literally one of the best music festivals in the UK, and quite possibly in the world. I spent 4 days camping on the Isle of Wight and had the most surreal and amazing time, with some of the best bands around, best vibes, best food and generally best everything.
For obvious reasons, some of these images are simply snapshots, and are not intended to be particularly arty or fantastically composed. In any case I don’t think these do the festival enough justice – it’s impossible to capture the exact ambience, but hopefully you will get some kind of idea.
All images are taken with my trusty 18-55mm lens (yes, the one all ‘professionals’ wouldn’t bother picking up).
Efficient packing?
The queue for buses and taxis on the Isle of Wight from Ryde to the festival itself were ridiculous. We waited around 2.5hrs.
Festival food – hardly the healthiest but easily burned off by moshing to dubstep later ; )
I have to give a shout out to Strumpets with Crumpets – quite possibly the best food stall at Bestival. The above was a marshmallow and chocolate crumpet. Divine.
Public Enemy were headlining on the Friday and some of the crew came out into the crowd beforehand:
Me as Flava Flav ; ) Yeahhh boyyyy!
So before they came onstage a few people tried to scramble onto the stage..
.. and were promptly dragged away by security
I’m more used to shooting in the pit than from the front row of the crowd, speaking of which – the pit for Public Enemy was packed with photographers – way more than for any other gig I have seen.
I have to say, the energy of Flava Flav and Chuck D is just fab – they were running around all over the place and getting the crowd totally revved up.
He photobombed my pic:
So mid-way through the gig, Flava Flav noticed me (no doubt thanks to the clock), blew me a kiss and personally gave me a copy of his autobiography (which I am currently mid-way through reading). It was definitely one of the highlights for me and a very nice bonus! He also told me he loved me! Thanks Flava : )
He signed my clock later too. My £1.69 clock from IKEA. Funnily enough I’d planned to throw it away – not anymore!
Ants at night
Ants in the day
Pendulum!
For some reason when I looked back at my pics I took literally 37 pictures of Pendulum from a distance – all crooked, blurry images. I have no idea what prompted me to repeatedly shoot the stage over and over – I blame a chocolate brownie I had right before the show which I’m convinced had more than just chocolate in.
Lasers are fun
One of the highlights – Asian Dub Foundation. I have loved this band for ages, but seeing them live took their music to a completely different level. They were playing in one of the smaller tents which had one of the best atmospheres. YouTube them if you don’t know them.
Bestival is synonymous with randomness
It’s Raptor Jesus!
More fest food – Paella and ribs!
Saturday was fancy dress day. I had planned to rehash my Flava outfit but now that I had his autograph over the clock, I decided I couldn’t possibly wear that again.
I found another Flava instead!
Raptor Jesus feeding geese (or scaring them away even)
Raptor Jesus posing with his people
Can you tell who these are?
Amy Winehouse and hmm.. not sure who the guy is meant to be.
Spice Girls:
Kelis:
Another highlight was a set by dubstep pioneers Skream and Benga, who stage dived:
I took a video of it:
Some serious dubstep moshing going on there!
Bestival isn’t just about the music – there were loads of other things to do and see, like The Wall of Death:
Winners of the fancy dress competition – Beastie Boys:
Slipknot and lots of Amy Winehouses – not a particularly likely combination:
My idol, PJ Harvey:
This was called the Swamp Shack:
Gotta love festival toilets, or not:
A festival isn’t complete without rain and mud:
This shop had pretty much every essential item you could possibly need when camping, including the fabulous ‘2 man pop-up shit tent’.
Said tent in reality:
The queues to charge phones were just as big as the toilet queues:
The youngest SLR photographer ever? So cute.
Kelis
I have to mention Mr Motivator, who gave a workout class to an absolutely jam packed and overflowing tent, and who got the loudest reception out of anyone I saw at Bestival. This guy is a legend.
Mocking the drunk man:
These guys photobombed me by taking a picture of themselves while I stood at the bar – unaware they were even shooting themselves.
And again..
.. and again!
Near our campsite was the Afterburner venue:
It looks pretty lame, right? Well, I’ve included this picture as it’s the only one I have of it, but in reality the DJs here were playing some of the best tunes in the early hours of the morning, and bursts of fire would come out of it every so often. Whoever was DJ’ing here deserves a medal, or two.
Bjork ended the Main Stage’s performances on the last day.
The music carried on in the Big Top Tent with DJ Shadow:
So there we have it – a brief snapshot of Bestival. I say ‘brief’ as there was so much more to it than what these images depict (such as the Cure who performed a 2.5 hour set).
