2011, May. Barcelona. Primavera Festival. Nearly 140000 people in 3 days.

Primavera festival is one of its kind and we were lucky enough to see live some great bands, such as The National, Belle & Sebastian, Fleet Foxes, Einstürzende Neubauten, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Dj Shadow, PJ Harvey, Interpol, Flaming Lips and Mr. Nick Cave with The Grinderman.

It was a pleasure trip and I only had the humble, but faithful Canon G11 with me, along with two cards, 8GB each.

We attended the early Belle & Sebastian live show and because of our good position (5 feet from the stage), we decided, me and 4 of my friends, to stay there and wait for the headliners of the festival, PULP, who would appear for the first time, after reunited for the first time in 12 years.

The moment Pulp came up on stage with their hit “Do you remember the first time?”, a huge human wave was immediately created that just swept us. My friends were lost from my sight in seconds, but I managed to stay very close to the stage, some 7-10 meters. In fact, I was right in the center, above the plastic cover of the wires that connected the stage with the sound engineers in the middle of the arena. Anyway, I remained in my position and the G11 started to shoot photos. I pulled enough for the first 3-4 songs to fill the space I had left on one card for this purpose and I switched to the second. I put it in a protective cover, threw it in my pocket, switched off the camera and put it in another pocket. For the rest of the night, i just danced nonstop and enjoyed the concert of the amazing Pulp.

Unfortunately, an unpleasant surprise awaited me, after i had left the concert: the protective cover of the card had been opened due to the dancing and, I guess, because of the keys that were in the same pocket, the card was scored imperceptibly, but irreparably.

Returning to Greece, i sent my card to a data recovery center, but no luck either. “The card was erased”.

So, at the end of this unique experience i ended up without a single photograph of Pulp. As if I was never there!

I think I managed to take some 30-40 frames, most of which were extremely close. Active participation in such concerts, from such short distance, means little or no freedom of movement, definitely small camera, no bag, but only pockets. Of course, the non-stop dancing is not particularly helpful in cases like this.

The moral of this story:

-Try to cover a subject (even personal projects) in more than one card.

-When finished photographing, either leave the card into the camera, or buy a metal case for protection.

-Where you store your cards, do not store anything else with it, especially something that can hack it.

-Oh, how I miss the film sometimes!  

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