V-Fest: Feature finding - Day 2

"Jess Apo of Gaithersburg, Md. dances as Wilco performs at Pimlico Race Course for the third annual Virgin Mobile Festival. As the sunset, patrons had to decide whether to hear the Foo Fighters or Jack Johnson close out day one of the festival."

You know you're at a Pimlico event when you roll down Park Heights and see fine folks of Baltimore selling parking spaces. I am willing to bet half of the spots they are selling aren't even theirs to sell, but they do it anyway.

Whether or not that is good for the economy, selling parking was again the case as I made my way back to Virgin Fest Sunday for day two.

Signs everywhere. $20 here. $30 there. Who knows where these people actually make one park or what they do to your car, but I'd sure never trust their "cheap, close parking."

With secured parking in the media lot and having shot a full day of mostly bands Saturday, I was ready to put that in the past and make some good looking, story telling features on Sunday.

As at any event, there are people being people. It's just a matter of finding those fine folks who tell what the event is all about. This usually means walking around and around, again and again, until you feel you've made a decent amount of photographs.

I am not going to lie, I was put to the test after I saw what Monica had produced. She knocked off some images I had also seen, cutting hierarchy of already preconceived images almost in half.

An hour passed Sunday and I had only made two images. Things were quiet early, but that's no excuse of how slow my shooting was going. But then I got a call. I was being pulled off the assignment.

A semi-truck had crashed off the Bay Bridge, killing the driver. My editor was trying to scrounge up a helicopter to get some aerials, but in the meantime, I would have to cover for Colby, our freelancer, who was covering a centerpiece for Monday. I'll get more into depth into this story on my next post.

So I was disappointed I had to leave. I had wanted to try some ideas with crowd surfing and other things going on at Virgin Fest. But I had to do my job, and that was going elsewhere to help complete a story.

Luckily, on Saturday, I did make a handful of features between bands and transmitting.

I didn't have much time to shoot features Saturday. Literally about five to 10 minutes each time I walked to or from the media lounge or stage.

Overall I made about six features Saturday of things that grabbed my eye as I made my way through the soup of music lovers.

Random note: I think I know why they call it Virgin Fest, too. A lot of young people under the age of 18. Yet, ironically, these "virgins" where all dressed very, dare I say, barely.

It's like a movie when the girl kisses her father before bed, but then tears off her pajamas and is dressed sexy, then proceeds to hit the town without his knowledge or permission.

Anyways, aside from the barely dress and dressed up characters, I focused on the a crowd, whether crowd surfing or dancing. However, I liked the above picture (although it lost some saturation and color after uploading) the best.

This was during Wilco's performance and as the sunset. People scattered across the lawn relaxing and soaking up the remaining sun rays and tunes of the day. One girl though stood out a she was the only one enjoying the music with dance.

I "worked it" as my editors tend to say, and liked the mood and light of the image. This verison ran in print on a page front, but I still like the colors in the above.

Overall, Virgin Fest was fun, but I wish I could have shot more features.

More on my day after "V-Fest" last this week.