Festivals are some of the most rewarding and frustrating places to shoot. The energy is incredible, the light is terrible, people are unpredictable, and you’ve got about half a second to nail a moment before it’s gone. I’ve shot everything from Splendour in the Grass to local food festivals in regional NSW, and every one of them has taught me something about working fast in messy conditions.

Here’s what I’ve figured out over the years.

Gear: Go Light or Go Home

The single biggest mistake I see at festivals is people lugging a full camera bag with three lenses, a flash, and a tripod. You’ll be on your feet for hours, pushing through crowds, and every gram matters.

My festival kit is simple:

• One mirrorless body. Something weather-sealed if possible. My Fujifilm X-T5 has copped rain, dust, and the occasional spilled beer without complaint.
• Two lenses max. A fast 35mm (or 23mm on APS-C) for crowd and atmosphere shots, and a 50-140mm or 70-200mm equivalent for stage shots from a distance.
• Spare battery. You’ll burn through power shooting all day, especially in the heat.
• A rain sleeve or zip-lock bag. Australian festival weather is wildly unpredictable. Bluesfest has been washed out more times than I can count.

Leave the tripod at home. You won’t use it. A monopod is handy if you’re shooting from a media pit, but for general festival shooting, handheld is the way.

Settings for the Two Biggest Challenges

Festival photography basically comes down to two scenarios: bright daylight with moving crowds, and dark stages with coloured lighting. They need completely different approaches.

Daytime crowd and atmosphere shots:

• Aperture priority, somewhere around f/4 to f/5.6
• Auto ISO with a ceiling of 3200
• Minimum shutter speed of 1/250s to freeze movement
• Continuous autofocus with face/eye detection if your camera has it

The goal is to capture candid moments — people laughing, dancing, eating, reacting. A slightly wider aperture helps separate your subject from the chaos behind them.

Stage and performance shots:

• Manual or shutter priority
• Shutter speed at 1/320s minimum (performers move fast)
• ISO pushed to wherever your camera stays usable — for modern mirrorless bodies that’s often ISO 6400 or higher
• Aperture wide open
• Spot metering or centre-weighted, because stage lighting will confuse matrix metering every time

Stage lighting changes constantly. One second the performer is lit with warm amber, the next they’re in deep blue shadow. Don’t fight it. Shoot in RAW and sort out the white balance later. If you’re shooting JPEG at a concert, you’re making your life unnecessarily difficult.

Etiquette and Access

This matters more than your camera settings, honestly. Most Australian festivals have clear rules about photography — respect them.

If you don’t have a media pass, you’re shooting from the crowd like everyone else. That’s fine. Some of the best festival images I’ve ever taken were from general admission, shoulder-to-shoulder with the audience. The energy translates directly into the photos.

A few ground rules:

• Don’t block people’s view. Holding your camera above your head with a massive lens is a quick way to make enemies.
• Ask before shooting strangers up close. A nod or a gesture goes a long way. Most people at festivals are happy to be photographed, but not everyone.
• Don’t use flash in the crowd during performances. It ruins the atmosphere and annoys everyone around you.
• If you’re in a media pit, you typically get the first three songs. Shoot fast, get your variety, and move out when your time’s up.

The Australian Institute of Professional Photography has some good general guidelines on event photography ethics if you want to read further.

Batch Processing: Don’t Edit 800 Photos One by One

A decent festival day produces hundreds of frames. Maybe a thousand if it’s a two-stage setup with good light. You absolutely cannot sit there adjusting each image individually.

Here’s my workflow:

1. Import into Lightroom and immediately reject the obvious duds. Out of focus, bad timing, someone’s elbow across the frame — flag them for deletion and move on.
2. Pick your best 50-100 frames. Be ruthless. Ten great shots from a festival are worth more than 200 average ones.
3. Develop one image per lighting scenario, then sync those settings across similar shots. Stage shots with the same lighting? One edit, copy to all.
4. Batch export at your target resolution. For social media, 2048px on the long edge at quality 80 is plenty.

This turns a six-hour editing session into about 45 minutes. The key is accepting that most of your frames aren’t keepers — and that’s completely normal at events.

Australian Festivals Worth Shooting

If you’re looking to build a festival portfolio, there’s no shortage of opportunities here. Vivid Sydney is a dream for light and colour work. WOMADelaide mixes incredible music with world culture in a beautiful parkland setting. Smaller regional festivals — think Grampians Grape Escape, Parkes Elvis Festival, or any of the coastal food and wine events along the NSW or Victorian coast — are often easier to shoot because the crowds are manageable and the organisers are more relaxed about cameras.

Whatever you shoot, bring comfortable shoes, protect your gear from the weather, and keep your eyes open. The best festival photos are rarely the ones you planned. They’re the in-between moments — the laugh, the stumble, the quiet pause between songs. Stay ready and you’ll find them.