Helllooooo Wembleeeey!

Yep, the first words from support act for U2, The Hours, just had to be "Helloooo Wembleeeeyyy"! Don't think it would have been a proper Wembley concert if the opening act hadn't said it. I don't do a lot of concert photography, the last one being Moby again at Wembley Stadium for Nike's Human Race event last year. I'm not a massive U2 fan, I like a lot of their stuff but I don't rush to download the new album, but when I got the call to shoot them at Wembley I did get a buzz! Whenever U2 comes up in conversation, it always takes me back to the 90's when I was a staff photographer at a sports agency. As usual, when the home nations football teams (and we included Ireland) were involved in World Cup qualifying games, we would cover them. This particular event had seen Ireland at home on the Saturday and away on the Wednesday so the agency sent a photographer out to Dublin to shoot the home game then booked them on the official Irish FA trip out to cover training and the match on Wednesday. Job done the snapper (no names to protect the guilty!) was duly back on the plane heading home with the Irish squad and the rest of the press. One of the players was chatting to the snapper and slipped into the conversation that U2's Adam Clayton was travelling back with the team and would said snapper like to meet him? Er, yes please! Player duly introduced them to this mega star who said "Hi, pleased to meet you" to which the photographer replied, "Pleased to meet you too....." We didn't let them cover Irish games for a while after!

I love getting different assignments and only having the first three songs to photograph the band was certainly going to be different. No time to waste, no opportunity to check lighting as that wouldn't start until U2 started. No time to change position, I'd been given the long lens pit and that was it. So, as the lights went out and U2 took to the stage, I shot a test pic, from that frame set the camera on manual and shot for three songs getting tight shots, wide shots, stage shots, general views and the Wembley arch shot! Was the show good? Who knows, I havn't even got a clue what the first three songs were, I was totally focused on getting as many different shots as possible! Luckily, as I was shooting for Wembley, after my three songs I was taken up to the TV gantry to get a shot of the Wembley arch from a high position so I had an extra half a song! Luxury. Actually, the extra 2 mins of shooting and a different position really made the set as I manged to get an extra five different pictures using wide, medium and long lens'. And just to round the evening off, I beat all the traffic by and hour and a half as I was out of Wembley in less than 35mins from U2 starting!