Accidental Glitter

For the past five years, this photo has been the lock screen on my phone. I love this photo, the energy, the memories it brings back, and it reminds me of one of the best summers of my life.

Summer 2015, my friend and I booked our flight and hotel for two weeks to spend in what we had named our home away from home. We had already bought our ten day festival passes for Festival D’été the music festival we had been going to on our nights off when we were in French camp for three years together. This time, we were weren’t going to miss out on any shows from manditory camp activites, instead we had ten nights of music.

I was so excited to go see Boston, The Rolling Stones, and The Tragically Hip. My taste in music for someone who was eighteen at the time is very old school. One night, we decided that we were going to check out a female rapper by the name of Iggy Azalea, I personally had never heard of her, so my friend pulled out his phone and played one of her popular songs at the time Fancy. Of course when I heard the song I sort of knew who she was, I had head the song in department stores or on tv, so we decided what harm could it be to check her out, we had nothing better to do that night.

Opening for Iggy Azalea was a pop group called Icona Pop again main stream music was not my thing, so of course I had never heard of them.

We managed to get to the concert before the opening group played and actually got pretty close to the stage. It was a beautiful summer evening. Then the concert started. The opening group was preforming and the amount of energy they had was AMAZING! For mainstream pop music, I thought it was fantastic. It was incredibly upbeat, they had the crowds entire attention. The music was also super catchy.

Almost to the end of their set, I pulled out my phone to get a video and maybe some pictures for memories of this group because of how great they were. That’s when the photo happened. I was attempting to take a video when there was a loud BANG which frightened the shit out of me and I didn’t press the record button on my phone, but instead somehow managed to take this picture of confetti glitter pouring over the crowd who were all so excited with their hands up. I can still hear the roar of the crowd cheering with excitement that confetti canons had exploded.

At the time I didn’t realize I had taken the picture, I still thought that I had gotten it all on video. As the main act came on stage and she started to rap, my friend and I looked at each other in horror, she sounded awful and nothing like her radio auto tuned self. We laughed and decided to leave, we were on the go all day so we were pretty tired anyways.

Once we got back to the place where we were staying I decided to watch the video of the glitter canons exploding. I still couldn’t believe I captured it on video, how lucky I was to whip my phone out exactly then. When I seen the thumbnail of the glitter, I clicked on it confused that there was no play button, then I realized I got only a picture. Turns out that picture was my favourite one I took that entire two weeks I was away. So much so that five years later it is still my lock screen on my phone. The exact moment the canon went off and glitter was falling everywhere I managed to snap, even though I thought I was taking the video I am so happy that this picture was the result. The colours of the lights on the stage make the picture as well.

So that is my accidental glitter picture (as I call it) story, I really hope you enjoy !