Pinkpop 2008

Last week, I went to the Pinkpop festival. This is an annual rockfestival in the South of the Netherlands. Its name is derived from ‘Pinksteren’, the Dutch word for Pentecost. The festival is normally held during the Pentecost-weekend, except for this year because Pentecost was so early. Dating back to 1970, Pinkpop is the oldest annual festival in the world.

I brought my Holga to the festival, rather than my ‘normal’ camera. My main target at the festival was music, not photography. When carrying my ‘normal’ camera, I have to be careful, as it is an expensive piece of equipment. With the $20 Holga, that’s a bit different. If it breaks, it breaks. Big deal. I actually lost my Holga while Rage Against the Machine were playing, but someone noticed me loosing it and handed it back to me. It is in fact a small miracle that the Holga survived the jumping crowds during an RATM-gig.

I loaded a 35mm film into my Holga, which is one of my favourite Holgamods (modifications for the Holga, more on this in an upcoming article). It delivers panorama-like pictures, with the sprocket holes inside the pic. I just shot people visiting the festival rather than the bands, as the Holga is much more suited for street photography than concert photography. Since the weather was much better than I expected, my initial guess to use a 400 ASA film was a bit off, leading to burnt highlights now and then. But who cares, Holgas are not meant to produce technically perfect pictures anyway.