I went to Denmark to cover the amazing 40th Roskilde Music Festival. Roskilde is a small town 1/2 hour outside of Copenhagen. The festival is held on a farm that is repurposed for the festival.

As one of Europe’s top three festivals, attended by over 110,000 people, Roskilde has a reputation for a laid back attitude of fun and as Thorsten Overgaard said ‘lots of dust, beautiful girls and neanderthal men’.

My highlights were Muse, Florence + the Machine and Biffy Clyro. Prince also put on a spectacular show. I jostled for space in the press pit with many other photographers to photograph these bands:

Muse – British prog rock awesomeness
Biffy Clyro – Scottish rockers
Florence + The Machine – British folk done right
Alice in Chains – influential 90’s rock (US)
Bad Lieutenant – formerly New Order (UK)
Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni BA – world music (Mali)
CV Jørgensen – singer-songwriter (Denmark)
Den Sorte Skole (The Black School) – Copenhagen’s 3 piece DJ set – amazing (Denmark)
Efterklang – up and coming atmospheric pop-rock (Denmark) – watch for these guys
Gorillaz – Damon Albarn’s trip hop project (UK)
Jack Johnson – chilled Hawaiian folk (US)
Julian Marley – Bob Marley’s son – rasta reggae (UK)
Kasabian – indie rock (UK)
Pavement – indie Rock (US)
Patti Smith – singer-songwriter – legendary ‘godmother of punk’ – (US)
Pendulum – electronic rock (Australia)
The Prodigy – electronic dance (UK)
The Temper Trap – alternative rock (Australia)
Vampire Weekend – fun indie rock (US)

To see all the images of the above bands, look on Getty Images here.

YouTube version for iOS users:

<- <- <- previous newsletter

Come to Brighton’s seafront Umi Hotel at 3pm on the 26th of June for the grand finale of the exhibition of work inspired by and produced during the relief efforts in Haiti. If you are not in the UK, view the tearsheet instead.

Felix will be MCing this event and amongst others will share some of my experiences working with the children orphaned by the earthquake in Haiti. Felix photographed all the individual orphans and provided all imagery to help The Future of Haiti orphanage gain sponsors – the orphanage is a project close to his heart. See Felix’s slideshow from his work with the orphanage by clicking here.

Several of Felix’s pieces from Haiti are on display among work by other UK artists. There’ll be live music, wine, snacks and great conversation to look forward to. Felix will be in the UK for just over 48 hours to host this event before going onto his next project.

Event:
‘Unite Brighton’ exhibition in aid of the Future of Haiti Orphanage

Location:
Umi Hotel Brighton, 64 King’s Road, Brighton, BN1 1NA

Time:
3pm, 26th of June 2010

Exhibiting Artists:
Felix Kunze
Sophie Sheinwald
Mandeep Birdy
Flora Pettitt
Guiseppi Santmaria
Angela Huang
Steve Yeates

50% of the sales of all art will go directly to the orphanage.

A giant ‘Unite Brighton’ piggybank will be on show at reception so all visitors can donate as they want, along with ‘I Helped Haiti’ T-shirts which will be for sale, all profits going to the orphanage.

Event organized and directed by Mandeep Birdy in association with Umi Hotel Brighton, ‘Unite Brighton’ and the Mayor of Brighton & Hove as well as other sponsors. Exhibition open until 30 June 2010. Pieces will be available via www.felixkunze.com – Felix is available for media interviews.

Oh, the marvels of Twitter. I’ve professed my love for the micro-blogging service on several occasions and have turned many people into addicts. Twitter connects me with people that I would otherwise not connect with, in a way that is somewhat impersonal yet personable at the same time. A few weeks ago I was tweeted by a student of Fine Art at Birmingham School of Art who pitched his ‘One World One Photo‘ Project.

Connar O’Keeffe somehow managed to cut through the clutter of tweets and I sent him one of my images from the ‘Mumbai – City of Colours’ series I shot over a year ago. It’s an image from the Bycula East Slum of Mumbai and it’s one of my most licensed images. He turned it and other art into a neat project and I think it looks great in printed form. Connar’s idea brought a bunch of photographers and artists together, that can only be a good thing. This is his description of the concept:

“The project ‘One World One Photo’ is intended to be ‘The Worlds Biggest Art Collaboration’ allowing anyone from any discipline to join in, formally trained in the arts or not. Participants are invited to submit a favourite piece of art work made by them whether it is a photograph, painting, sculpture or film still.

So far the 48 images in the collection range from Photographs and paintings to sculptures and sketches. The project has gathered images from all around the British Isles and has spread as far as Sydney, Mumbai and Las Vegas.

The book is a collation of 48 images –  ’One World One Photo’. It contains images from professional photographers, fine artists, students and many more. One World One Photo is not just a one off, it is intended to grow and develop, with the hope of reaching every continent and every country in the world.”

Megan’s shoot in Florida last year. I loved this location.

For more of this type of work, head over to the portrait section.

Their work really moved me and to communicate what they have achieved and what is needed to further support this project, I put together another one of my slide-shows. This one is about 15 minutes and gives a lot of information about the lives of Haitian orphans. I appreciate the time you take to have a look through this. Feel free to link here, link to the video or embed it in your own site. I am keen to spread awareness of this amazing project.

The Future of Haiti – Help Haitian Orphans from felix kunze on Vimeo.

To sponsor a child or donate to the orphanage, please visit www.thefutureofhaiti.org – any amount helps

To see the first slideshow, go here

More Haiti images are on my Haiti preview post

To keep up to date on my work in Haiti and other socially responsible projects, join me on facebook, follow me on twitter, subscribe to the blog or get in touch by commenting below. Oh and don’t forget to go check out the rest of my work.

I’ve just gotten an interview published on the fascinating Miss Eco Glam blog. It’s a good read for anyone interested in healthy living. Check it out here.

I also did an interview on Photowalkthrough.com, a popular photography podcast: Listen to it here.  It’s more Haiti than photography.

There’s also an interview coming up on www.photonetcast.com – again about Haiti.

Separately we’ve been working on our inspire meetups and Lara also mentioned it on her blog here.

On the lighter side of things, I phoned into the fun Kpod again, had an informal chat with the ladies that descended into a ridiculously fun gigglefest. Listen here.

I really should have a separate blog area for all the media coverage!

Some of the attendees at Inspire London March 2010 - Photo © 2010 Chris Davis www.specularworld.com

On a recent trip to New York, my friend and fellow photographer Lara Jade and I were chatting over coffee and decided to do something about the sometimes exclusive nature of the UK photo industry. Getting established in the industry can be an uphill struggle, made worse by the sometimes terse reaction from other photographers when it comes to learning from those who have made it. Lara has a great thing going in fashion and I’ve built up a decent client base and am travelling all over the world doing what I love. We both get a fair amount of email asking for advice and aren’t always able to answer due to time constraints. It is often much simpler to talk in person and get to know people. Besides, we know so many young creatives that are superbly talented and will surely be the future of the industry.

In other words, we convinced each other that we have achieved something and felt that there was time to give something back. The result was Inspire. The idea is in it’s infancy, an informal concept of getting people together, creating a community and engaging people who share common creative interests to chat to one another. We added something a little more concrete by asking attendees to bring along their portfolios.

Lara was fantastic and took care of all the scheduling and also came up with the name, perfect for what we were trying to achieve.

We had our first event on the 26th of March – the results were nothing short of fantastic.

The turnout was great, the mood was good, the talent on show was outstanding and the weather held out too. We even had an agency come in with a lot of interest show in the photographers that were there.

Some of the feedback:

- Thanks so much for organising friday’s meetup, it hit me how incredibly lucky we are to be part of such an amazing community.

- You hit the nail on the head when you were thinking of a name for the meet.. The one word I would use to describe it is inspiring!

- Inspire meetup yesterday was the best, thank you Felix Kunze and Lara Jade for organizing it! I met so many amazing people.

- Inspire meet up in London was fantastic! Well done to @felixkunze & @LaraJade_ for organising a great day!

We sent out a press release to the UK photo press should get published to publicize this and future events.

What started as 1 day of fun has now turned into a side-project of ours. We will be announcing dates for a New York meetup soon and will be doing meetups in Birmingham and London as soon as schedules allow.

Having seen so many creatives get inspired, get advice and seeing a community build makes the effort we put in totally worth it. We hope to see you at a future event.

For news and updates, be sure to follow @inspiremeetups as well as @felixkunze and @larajade_ on twitter.

Reviewing Portfolios - Photo @ 2010 Sam Butler

Reviewing Portfolios - Photo @ 2010 Sam Butler

(Organizing meetups isn’t the only thing Felix does. Head to the home page, look out for Haiti and other recent work on the blog.

I went to Berlin again, this time for a family trip. Here’s some images from my trip:

Reminds me of 1984 somehow

Sony Center

Jewish Memorial Jumper

Gefaengnis is the German for Prison

Friedrichstrasse Train station

If you like this, you may like my previous Berlin photos.