The Minds of 99 – Dodekalitten. Foto af Flemming Bo Jensen
This really has been the year of The Minds of 99 with so many incredible live shows during the Summer. I have been fortunate to document some of them including the insane Northside show. The latest project was something very different. A slice of gorgeous mind-blowing magic, in a most tranquil location in the country.
Dodekalitten is not place I had ever heard of before until several months ago when I first heard of this project. It is a unique art installation in Lolland in Denmark with twelve 7 to 9 meter tall stone pillars, where sculpturer Thomas Kadziola sculps a detailed face onto each pillar. It is something like a cross between the Easter Island figures and Stonehenge. It is magnificent. There are 10 stone pillars right now and I think Thomas has spent 8-9 years so far carving out the figures. He will likely spend another 10 to finish the entire project and at the end there will be 12 stone figures in all. Normally there is also a soundtrack playing on a 12 channel speaker setup inside the circle of figures. For this Royal Beer Tak Rock! event there is instead a circular stage inside the circle of stone pillars and Denmark’s biggest and best live band – The Minds of 99. They performed their album Solkongen in entirety from start to finish. Solkongen means the Sun King and a huge Solkongen figure behind the stage complemented the stone figures. It looked incredible, just look at my intro picture above.
I arrived at about 10.30am and it was a warm sunny day of documenting the setup, sound rehearsals and the thousands of people arriving. We were insanely lucky with the weather, sunny and no wind made for perfect and very warm conditions. Then, just as the sun had set, at 8.45pm, the band went on. They played for 54 minutes, the entire Solkongen album in a very different The Minds of 99 setting and performance. Normally, there is a punk-like energy level at their festival shows, but this show was tailored to the location and the event, and was a more aesthetic and introverted, a very focused and controlled performance. For me, as soon as the band emerges from their trailer, the rest is kind of a blur. I am so hyper concentrated on observing and making pictures that time speeds up. The 54 minutes felt like 10 minutes to me. After the wonderful show, I really really could have done with a repeat! Fortunately, the entire show was filmed by a large video crew and is coming out as a concert movie. I really need to relive this magical day again.
I was really nervous and tense leading up to this show. A unique never to be repeated event. I really, really wanted to make the best pictures ever. As in ever. An impossible task, but I really needed to at least make some of my best ever Minds’ pictures. Whether I succeeded I will let you decide dear reader. I am reasonably satisfied with the pictures I made. I missed some stuff and I definitely rushed some situations where I should have slowed down. But I also made a handful of pictures that I am very happy with. Dive into the gallery and let me know what you think and enjoy this spectacular event.
Gallery – The Minds of 99 at Dodekalitten
The band came on stage one hour before the show to greet the many fans and then returned one hour later just after sunset to play the show, that is why you will see them in this story come to the stage twice.
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Camera setup for this gig
I shot this gig with my preferred setup of 2 x Fujifilm X-T3s with Fujinon 16mm F1.4 and 35mm F1.4 lenses. It is my go-to setup that I shoot 90% of my work on. But then I figured, with a 50 minute show, I don’t want to waste any seconds so instead of just bringing my Samyang 8mm fisheye lens (which I figured would come in handy here and it did), I actually brought my X-T2 along with that lens mounted. Then when it was time for fisheye, it was just a matter of grabbing this in my shoulder bag and firing away, no lens changes necessary. It worked really well, I will do this again at big events. Here is a bit of Fujifilm gearporn for ya: