"I think, therefore I travel" - didn't someone once say that? I am once again 'on the road' to home and BMI are providing the steed for the evening. I have at long last discovered the highlight of this little airborne sojourn, a simple cup of tea. The meal come in pressed foil, the sweet in a plastic pot, the bread roll in cling film, but in a world of petty indignities (read 'economy') the tea is delivered in a china cup. Admittedly, it's not Wedgwood, but I'm sure Josiah would appreciate the irony here. If ever a journey needed a highlight, it's this one.

Getting to the airport and checking in was no great shakes, but then I came to immigration - seems the last time I travelled back from Bahrain, the Saudi authorities didn't quite get round to reporting the fact as accurately as their generally bureaucratic demeanour would normally have you believe. Instead, I discover that I've not been in the country for the last month. For someone who has apparently been idling his time away from the workplace, I really ought to have a better tan. So I sit. And then I wait. Then I read. Then I sit some more. The bonus is that I'm getting on nicely with my book, so no bad thing, but now the flight is less than an hour away and I'm cultivating bedsores sitting at the front of class on the naughty stool. I'm sure they have it under control though. Err.... scratch that and rewind. For a moment I forgot where I was. Hmm, for someone who approaches travel in the same way an ostrich deals with danger, even I'm beginning to consider the possibility that I may have to adjust the altitude of an immaculately groomed eyebrow! Finally I succumb to standing up and enquiring as to the RAG status of my passage out of here - am I on amber still, perhaps a green or heaven forbid I've been declared a red. Not to worry though, relief is at hand (ooh err...) and I've got the blue I needed and can at last hit the Costa Coffee. Luckily, the aircraft is still on the ground though the crew passed through airport control before I did. Rich is still here, we go to a meeting on Thursday before the holiday starts proper. That promises to be the most entertaining meeting I've ever attended, but as they say, forewarned is forearmed.

Actually on the aircraft now though and I take on my next 'opportunity'. The flight is full, my seat is occupied (decorum dictates that I don't describe by what), I appear to have insufficient space (too many essentials), and the iPod earphones have gone walkies. The overhead locker is turned out, my co-passenger is up-rooted and I resign myself to looking at a feeble white box of tricks for the next 6 1/2 hours with no possibility of parole and no chance of getting the damned thing back in my carry on bag. As I understand the subject, miracles are not an everyday event, yet as I look down the aisle, I spot a familiar little grey velvet bag - the earphones. In such small mercies are my co-travellers spared the sound of me uttering the word "FUCK!" once more at an escalating pitch - I only reached C# honest m'lud. It is such things that now permit me to listen to Marc Bolan as I write - what a lot of tripe he turned out. Fortunately, random play insists I listen to Rush's '2112: Overture' next. All I need now is for someone to take the child in the seat behind me, who has been kicking my chair incessantly for the last two hours and feed him into the engine intake. Better get the files out boys, someone is going to have to blend out those small nicks in the compressor fan. I'm sure Mr Whittle never thought of his pride and joy as an outsize waste disposal unit. You win some, you lose some.

It's now 03:20 though and I should grab some shut eye - just a shame that someone round here smells of piss - I should maybe clarify, that it's not me. Night all.

Maybe 3 or 4 miles down the road from where I live in Saudi is an area we rather jokingly call "The Golden Mile". It's a place where you can find the saddest bunch of amusement parks and rides imaginable. It is also home to a never ending series of small stalls selling what might best be described as souvenirs, and also tiny food huts (I tried some - not good). The photo below is one of a series I shot on Tuesday evening before I flew back to the UK. I only managed to process just a few, this being one of them - head over to flickr for a few more.

This guitar, a Yamaha SA2200, is now my most viewed picture over at flickr. Oddly though, it has very few comments on it and even fewer favourites on it - just 1 as I write. It would seem that most of the views originate from search engines such as Google images as opposed to views originating within flickr itself. I don't mind people looking, but it would be nice if they could at least acknowledge that they like what they see.

...or maybe they don't :(

Nah! I don't believe that... :crazy:

It's now almost a full week since I did the shoot at Salwa Rocks II and I think perhaps time to reflect on what went right and more importantly, what I could do better next time. It's probably fair to say that Salwa Rocks II wasn't quite Knebworth, but then again Knebworth isn't set less than 0.5 Km from my front door either. Considering that it was mostly put together by a volunteer staff of compound residents with little to no experience of setting up a sizeable live music event, it was bloody marvellous. There were too many good things about this to start nit picking on the way the day was organised and run. It's also worth remembering that the musicians were (I think) all of amateur status - this is not their real job.

The point of this post really is to look at what I as a photographer (also amateur) could have done better to ensure I had the best chance of grabbing some top notch shots from the day. With that I'll make a little list of things I can think of that would help.

1. Firstly, at a maximum ISO of 1600, the Canon 350D really isn't up to doing the nights shots. The only way I got away with what I did was because the EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM does such a good job of image stabilisation. So long as the performers didn't move at all, I could get away with some ridiculously slow shutters speeds - at one point as low as 1/8s. I do though need that shorter focal length, so perhaps another 5DII or 5D body might be in order, with the non-IS (boo) 24-70mm f/2.8 L might be better - more moolah!
2. There were times when I needed a better view of things and found myself climbing on things I perhaps shouldn't have been, particularly so at the sides of the stage. Next year I think taking the household step-ladders would be a good thing. Easy fix - no cost either.
3. What next? I know there's something, but seem to forget what... Oh yes, memory cards. The 5DII eats them for breakfast and spits out their wirey entrails. Even with 4Gb cards, I was getting wary of running out of space and taking less shots than I might have done, because I didn't want to run out of options for 'the next band'. I even used up two 2Gb cards and with that body they only hold around 57 images as I was shooting in RAW. This is an easy sort, before the year is out, I reckon I'll have at least two 8Gb cards and perhaps a couple more 4Gb ones too.
4. The next thing I think I need to do is not to zoom in too close at times. There are quite a few images, where for the want of a few more millimetres of zooming out, I'd have got 'the whole guitar' or 'the whole performer' on the image. With the 350D and its 8MP sensor, you tend to want to squeeze every last pixel out of the shot and really fill the the frame - with the 5DII, there perhaps a little more latitude there and you have the option to crop without throwing too much away in the process
5. Next, I need to concentrate more on avoiding the stage furniture; music stands, mic stands, dangling cables and so on. Towards the end of the day, I did get better at predicting where a performer was going to move, but before that I collected any number of fantastic shots of singers and guitarists with mics, cymbals and assorted other sundries just at a point where the shot became pretty much unusable
6. The last couple are things that I think the organisers could look at: Firstly the lighting - from a photographers perspective they just weren't bright enough to work with reliably. There were times when the row of lights over the front edge of the stage weren't being used - not sure why. Whilst there were lights either side of the stage, they were just a bit too far back from the plane the performers tended to be standing in, which meant faces were often in shadow. Those side lights were a bit too far away as well, which left the light rather weak at the centre of the stage. All easy fixes, they just need a little thought.
7. The stage itself could have been placed around 12-18" further back from the front barrier. This would have given me a working space in front of the audience and would have helped with getting jostled at times - not what you want when you're stretching the limits of the camera equipment anyway
8. Finally, next year I'll just pick up a guitar and perform, it's over so much quicker...

"We're having a rock festival" they said, "Do you need a photographer?" I said, "Sure" they said. 1,142 images later and the "Salwa Rocks II Festival" was in the can (Compact Flash card strictly speaking), and I faced the editing job from hell. Never has Photoshop been a less inviting place than today - where do you start? For those viewing, you can start here...

For those brave souls who want more you can go over to the "Salwa Rocks II - 2009" set over at flickr HQ. There will be many more to join this select few - try the Slideshow, it makes viewing much easier.