On Thursday afternoon we attended the 2nd day of the Wireless Festival in Hyde Park. This was the first proper festival we’ve ever attended in this country, which sounds a little strange considering at the concerts we’ve been to over the years. Anyway we went and it was fun, the only pity being the weather which turned grey and a bit chilly as the evening wore on. We caught a number of good acts, the Violent Femmes singing ‘Blister in the Sun’ bringing back memories of university days. Missy Higgins and Amanda Ghost were good but the highlight for us was KT Tunstall who delivered a barnstorming and enthusiastic performance, totally capturing the attention of the growing festival audience. There were also ‘festival things’ going on, people wandering around blowing bubbles, strange characters on stilts, stalls selling a wide variety of food, drink and clothing and also a big screen showing World Cup football (seemingly just for the small crowd of Australian’s in attendance).
I smuggled my camera in and while taking shots of the Violent Femmes I was tapped on the shoulder and had a security man investigate my camera looking for signs of professionalism. Thankfully I only had a 50mm non-zoom lens attached and was able to convince him I wasn’t going to be zooming in and taking high quality photos to presumably sell on and therefore deprive the (obviously) cash-poor artists of hard earned image rights money. That’s the problem with being an enthusiast with good kit and a bit of know-how, sometimes people just think you’re up to no good (like the police thinking you’re a terrorist threat, remember that?). Anyway, he let me keep my camera and I have photos which you can see in the gallery.
The Bubble Man
Speaking of photos I entered a photo into the TNT Travel Photography awards a while back and it’s been short listed in the ‘World Around Us’ section. They announce the winner on the 2nd August but in the meantime you can vote for the People’s Choice award which is a separate category I get to enter by virtue of being a short listed candidate. If you go to the TNT Travel Award site at this address http://www.tntmagazine.com/travelawards/ you can see the other entries and vote for your favourite. You don’t have to vote for me if you like the other photos better… it’s not like I know who you’ll have voted for. So maybe I’ll win something and that’ll spur me on to enter more competitions and maybe try selling some photos. Or maybe I should be doing that anyway. Have a look and vote for the People photography award and have a read of the travel writing nominees as well. It’s all good stuff.
What do you get if you win?
See the next post. All prizes are from Contiki and tend to include flights but are only for one person (I think the Spanish one is for two people, maybe).