I first started photographing performers on 20th September 2003 when I took a couple of disposable cameras to the Mr Zippy gig at Middlesbrough Town Hall Crypt. The combination of me enjoying doing it and the satisfaction of my end results spurred me on to continue it as a hobby and for the next few punk rock shows I went to I took a point and shoot film camera with me, which yielded a better quality of photo in terms of colour but little else.

It was at this point when I got me my first digital camera - an Olympus c-350z. It was nothing terribly special and if anything it was just a digital version of the film camera I had used previously, only this had a few more settings, though only one which I found a use for at the time and that was the ability to deactivate the flash. Sure, a flash will light things up so you can actually take a photo of something apart from darkness however, even back then I could see that it ruined the atmosphere of the photos by lighting everything up including things that weren’t the performer and plus, I always believe that flashes can be very distracting too. Essentially this is a principle I’ve stood with since day one of this hobby, with the only exceptions being a local band who often played in dingy pubs but I knew them and knew they didn’t mind it.

Back to the story, the c-350z was a simple enough camera and took a couple of amazing photos for me, [this one] being the prime example, but with a lack of actual control of what the camera did I felt limited by it and so for my birthday in 2004 I got a Fujifilm s5500 after seeing a friend getting good photos of the same nature with the s5000. From here on in this camera shall be refered to as Siegfried as that is what I named him earlier this year, not after Freud or indeed the Las Vegas magicians but from the Nerf Herder song about said magicians; I’m weird like that - it is a good song though.

For nearly four years Siegfried and I went to see all manner of music gigs in various venues from hardcore punk and metal bands in back rooms of pubs through to Busted at the Newcastle Metro Arena. Over this period of time I learned a lot about camera functions and what’s sposed to work best for gig photography and I slowly improved the quality of my shots (compare [before] to [after]).

It was also during this period of time when I became interested more in comedy than in music. My first foray into photographing comedy didn’t go down to well when an usher told off my mum and myself for even daring to hold up a camera-phone to The Mighty Boosh though looking back at it I figure it’s either because Noel seems to be very controlling of his image or simply because the venue was owned by LiveNation. Whatever the reason it put me off photographing comedians until my friend, Hannah, convinced me to take some of Tim Minchin during his Norwich gig last year and the performance photography bug came back.

Consequently I continued to take photos of Tim whenever I saw him as I enjoyed it and I knew he wouldn’t mind but shyness put me off photographing other comedians in the act as I was worried I’d get singled out due to my penchant for sitting on the front row. However, going to as many comedy shows as I do, this mentality does get beaten out of you eventually.

Also, with a refreshed love of my hobby came the desire to have a new camera as four years is a long time in terms of current technology trends and so earlier this year I bought Hamish (maybe named after Hamish Blake, maybe not), a Fujifilm s8000fd, who is essentially an upgraded version of Siegfried. I have no qualms with him or the fact that I bought him and not a DSLR as it’s not the camera that takes the photos, it’s the photographer. And besides, if I had bought a DSLR I wouldn’t have dared take it to Latitude for fear of it being stolen and you wouldn’t get to see the lovely photos you’re going to see now.

Over the weekend I took photos of Robin Ince, Adam Bloom, Simon Day, Ben Norris, Russell Howard, Ross Noble, Dan Atkinson, Tim Minchin, Scott Capurro, Jon Richardson, Bill Bailey, Jeremy Hardy, Rich Hall, Russell Kane, Phill Jupitus, Steve Weiner, Andrew Lawrence, Milton Jones, Otis Lee Crenshaw, Stewart Lee, Omid Djalili and Dave Gorman among a few others. Photos of the aforementioned are all on [my Flickr] page but here’s a small taster of them.