THE MINDS OF 99. The biggest and best live band in Denmark. They made history at Parken Stadium in 2021. They did it again in 2024! 3 concerts, 3 nights in a row, more than 140000 fans, never been done before at the Danish national stadium, not even by the big international acts. And will probably never be done again. These were truly once-in-a-lifetime days.
I would have thought by now, more than a month later, that I would have found the words to properly describe what it was really like to be part of this project and how much it all means to me. But I have no words still, they may come at a later day in my behind-the-scenes story – but I also think you can only really understand these concerts and this project if you were there. So I am going to let my pictures do the talking in this essay.
This is biggest project I have ever done and will ever do as a music photographer. It is the project I prepared the most for, honestly I started planning and thinking about this shortly after the first visit to Parken in 2021. The goal for these 3 x concerts was really to make my ‘masterpiece’, make a collection of iconic images in a combined story that could stand as the pinnacle of my career, of my work as a concert photographer.
The concerts featured first and foremost the band (and entire crew!) in absolute topform after months of rehearsals. The show featured a massive stage, gigantic 4K screen (almost 700 square meters), pyro in the stage, ‘floating’ platforms, mad awesome light and fire pyro setup on huge motion controlled rigs in the ceiling and it was all just absolutely mindblowing to experience and document. The setlist was a tour-de-force of MINDS favourites and a lot of the songs in slightly or massively upgraded/tweaked versions that sounded amazing. The concert had massive peak moments, but also intimate sing-along moments, and I think the most impressive feat was getting this big ugly stadium packed with 50,000 people to feel at times like a small intimate concert venue! The show connected to even the people at the very back, in no small part due to the immersive experience of awesome lights and sound coupled with that insanely high quality and huge screen!
The 108 pictures in this essay are a selection of my favourites from all 3 concerts (and a few from the final rehearsal the night before the first show) and roughly in sequential order so you can follow along in the setlist and relive all the memories if you were there. I worked really hard on this essay, selecting and sequencing the pictures and grading them to have the look we designed for MINDS SoMe posts. It is the first time I have been part of designing a complete look and grade for all stills from a project, a look we finalised before the concerts. Honestly it turned out so well I really want to do this for other big projects. But that’s for another post another time. This one is all about the concert and my photos, and I remember the day after the shows were over, I just remember feeling that I was pleased I had done absolutely everything I could to make this a success for me and my photo team and that I had a really good feeling about the pictures I made. Now, having done the final delivery and also gone back over all of my work, I am really quite happy with the selection. I don’t know if it is my masterpiece, that is not for me to decide but I feel it is a story, a collection of pictures that will stand the test of time, a pinnacle of my career, and can stand as a testament to my love of music and music photography and The Minds of 99.
Please view this on a laptop or tablet, anything with a bigger screen than your phone. This is a bigger than life widescreen show and a stadium sized photo essay, it needs a large screen! Put on a playlist of your favourite MINDS songs and time travel back to Parken stadium. It’s time for Niels Brandt to walk on stage and for the crowd to go wild!
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Thank you – there are so many amazing people to acknowledge. Thank you first and foremost a massive thank you to The Minds Of 99: Niels, Anders, Asger, Louis and Jukse. Thank you to manager Ole Nørup, you are an inspiration! Thank you production manager Jonas Friis for being amazing to work with and ensuring super good conditions for me and my team. Thank you to the entire Minds crew and family. Thank you to my wonderful phototeam, Malthe, Anna, Kasper and Morten. Thank you to Mark Balstrup and his team. Thank you to Live Nation and the staff at Parken stadium.
And a special thank you to you, the incredible fans that I got to share these 3 days with <3
All pictures made with FUJIFILM gear: X-T5 with XF16-55mm + XF50-140mm lenses, and GFX100S II with GF20-35mm lens. Thank you FUJIFILM Nordic for the support!
Stay tuned for a behind the scenes look, more about the photography and perhaps a Team photo essay.
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