What a Summer! The Minds of 99 took a scaled-down version of the ‘Parken 2024 stadium’ show on the road and played 7 headliner festival gigs. This was so much fun and awesome to be a part of, and I am so grateful to be documenting The Minds of 99 live on year 9 now. This band, this crew, never ceases to surprise me of just how much the goalpost can be moved each year. I loved doing this tour, my favourite Minds tour so far for sure. I had a fantastic time shooting each show and making the SoMe posts (a few of them are in the cover picture above) and can’t wait for the 2026 tour. A special bonus was this festival tour had stops in a few of the cities where my family lives, and they all came out to see me (and the band) at work, that was really special moments!
Massive thank yous to the band, management, crew and everyone involved in this fantastic tour! It really was the best. Big hugs to all the incredible fans that made every gig really special, it’s a real privilege to get to be so close to you in the pit and feel your love for the band and the songs!
Thank you so much to all the festival photographers who donated their time and skills to help document the big fire and pyro moments from the festival grounds. It has been so nice to work with and meet some of you and see the great pictures you sent me after the shows. I have featured 2 of my favourites, an epic fire drone-picture from Nibe Festival by Ricky Sam Winther and an epic pyro picture from Suset Festival by Mathias Engmark. There are a few more photography notes at the end of this essay, but now lets dive into some pictures, a selection of my favourites from all 7 shows in same order as the setlist!
Preparation
Watching the ‘universe’ being tested, rehearsed and perfected is so fascinating. So many creative and skilled people make this happen and I really like learning about how everything works. The production rehearsals also offers a good opportunity to learn the show and make my plans (you can read more about that in my newsletter).
Showtime
The ‘universe’ has been built and every system is go. The band takes the stage, and the crowd roars. Never fails to give me goosebumps!
Photography notes
All pictures made on FUJIFILM X-T5 (with XF10-24mm, XF16-55mmII, XF50-140mm lenses) and GFX100S II (GF20-35mm lens) cameras. About half the pictures in this essay was made using the new XF16-55mmII lens, it is my absolute favourite and go-to lens for everything. Thank you as always to FUJIFILM Nordic for the wonderful support!
It’s a luxury to have 7 shows to document, I can learn from one show and try new things for the next one. But I still treat each show as its own one-off. I was shooting and creating the SoMe posts for the band for each festival, to be collab posted by the band and the festival. So this is on my mind of course, to try and get pictures at each location that showcase that particular festival, the view from the stage is really important here, as the pictures from the pit will look somewhat identical from each festival. And also essential (as mentioned earlier) was the festival photographers who helped with pictures from out in the crowd, on cranes, in ferris wheels, on rooftops, the creativity was awesome! It’s basically impossible for me to get anywhere except the stage and pit during a show on a massively packed festival ground, so the help from the festival photographers was so important. And both the band and the festival got better pictures because of it, I love creating and making things happen in teams. Thank you everyone!
One tip is, it doesn’t matter if you have 7 or 70 shows, if the picture is there, make it! Don’t wait or think “eh can’t be bothered to move, I will make it next time”. The specific conditions of light, haze, wind, weather etc. might never repeat itself. The second to last picture featuring Anders (the guitarist) doing a big jump is from Jelling, the very first festival. I made that picture 6 more times but it never looked as good, he never perfectly hit the peak of the jump with the light hitting him and I never hit the timing of the shutter as good either. Make the shot when it’s there!
Another tip and one of my favourite parts of the 7 shows is that the show is the same of course, but the festival stages are different in size and layout so you might suddenly find that a shot that never worked before, works well at today’s gig because the stage is for example a bit wider. So never file away a particular shot as ‘never gonna work’, always approach each show with an open mind, it’s part of why I did a lot of wandering around the stage during change-over, I am checking out the angles and discovering “oh this works today, this has never worked, I am going to use this spot for that song etc”. Especially with a stage layout like this show, huge staircase, big ‘trees’, amps etc, small variations in placement makes a huge difference to the shooting angles. Also, it rained at 4 out of the 7 shows, and it’s nice and dry to hang out on stage 🙂
Last tip, if you discover that the keyboard console is really quite reflective, you of course have to make the obligatory photographer-selfie! With that, this essay and the Summer tour is over, see you next year!
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