Have you ever wondered what it's like to take photos for a band playing a music festival? Gaining an artist pass is not an easy task to come by as an intro level concert photographer. It's often something that a lot of concert photographers spend years trying to obtain. For me, I gained my first taste of music festival photography from the stage this past July at the Harley Davidson Homecoming Festival in Milwaukee, Wisconsin attending with the opening band Hank Ruff and the Hellbenders.

Now how did I get here? Let's rewind a little back to October 2023. When I first started out in concert photography, Hank Ruff was one of the first musicians I ever took photos for at Bluebird Bar in Bloomington, Indiana. I had reached out with no experience asking if I could come take photos of one of his shows which landed me a job becoming the band's new photographer. Over the past few months, I've been lucky enough to attend numerous shows with the band from Bloomington, Indiana to Chicago, Illinois. When Hank was asked to play as the opening act for the Harley Davidson Festival, I was asked to come along and take photos.

As this was my first time taking photos at a music festival, I had no idea what to expect. I had only taken photos from the pit a handful of times at smaller venues in the past but never had experienced the large scale festival scene from a photographer's perspective.

When the band and I arrived at the festival, we were shown backstage to the trailers and given our artist passes for the day. Receiving that artist pass was a moment I'll never forget realizing that I was officially behind the scenes of this festival. There were numerous performers for the day including Warren Zeiders, Pricilla Block, Hardy and Jelly Roll and all of a sudden I was backstage alongside them. Reality set in as the band warmed up during sound check on the main stage getting to see the entirety of the venue that held 60,000 people. While the band warmed up for the show, I began finding the angles I wanted to capture and made sure to take plenty of candid photos as this was also the band's first time playing a stage of this size. After an hour of sound check and a quick trip to catering it was time for the show. The band took the stage and I began taking close ups on stage alongside them. Since I had all access during the set, I was able to jump around from the pit to the crowd to the stage, capturing as many moments as I could. As the set concluded I followed them off stage capturing every possible moment as I knew this would be something none of us would want to forget. We spent lots of time backstage taking photos as well ending with roughly 1,200 photos from Hank Ruff and his band alone.

While I had the artist pass for the day, I had also requested a photo pass through the festival so I could take photos of the remaining acts. This ended up being an incredible experience for me, getting to take photos from the pit for both Hardy and Jelly Roll. The photo pass worked much

differently than the artist pass did. As for all press photographers, we were only allowed to take photos for the first 3 songs from the pit. This ended up being a great experience and allowed me to capture some of my favorite photos from both acts.

Attending this festival was truly an amazing experience and something I’ll never forget. It proved to me that working hard on building your connections and shooting your shot is important because you never know where it will take you. Being able to attend with Hank and his band grew my love for capturing the behind the scenes moments and being able to show fans perspectives that they otherwise wouldn't see.