Stendhal Festival 2024

I was fortunate enough to get to photograph Stendhal festival in Limavady, Co. Derry, this year. I was there on the Friday and Saturday and it was quite an experience.

I arrived at the festival at around 12:30pm and set up my tent for the night and then got straight into photographing at 1pm. My job was to capture the “essence of the festival”. Stendhal is a family friendly festival so this ranged from the bands to the children’s activities.

It’s difficult for me to summarise two days worth of bands into a quick blog post so I will just run through my favourites:

Tessio playing on the radio Ulster stage on Friday afternoon.

Tessio is a band from Derry, I saw them play in the Radio Ulster stage on Friday and then again on the Saturday. They were truly great and their song “Away Somewhere” is one for the Hozier fans in my opinion.

Ríoghnach Connolly & HoneyFeet

They were playing on the Karma Valley Stage on Friday and they really brought an energy to the crowd to open up the evening.

I think one of my favourite sets was by a band called “Polar Bolero”. They were playing on Saturday in the Wooly Woodland stage, the crowd was loving it and you could tell the band were savouring every minute of their time up there. It was probably the busiest I saw that stage.

Polar Bolero

A combination of folk, jazz and trad created something that sounded very familiar but also so new.

The Zutons were one of the headliners, I had never heard of them or listened to any of their music but I thoroughly enjoyed their set. The crowd was buzzing off their energy and singing their songs back to them.

I am a sucker for saxophone. I love hearing it in live music, it adds so much life and always gets me excited.

I think that’s about it for standout bands that I really liked. Except for one, I did not get this bands name and I can’t find them on the schedule.

This is the lead singer.

If anyone knows what this band is called PLEASE send me a message and let me know, I would really like to find them.

Here are a couple more of my favourite photos

Aspiring children

The lead singer of “Vera”

Alright, I think that’s all I have to say. Thank you to everyone at Stendhal for having me come and photograph, it was a great experience.

I will have some of these photos posted on my Instagram soon when I get round to it.

Thank you for reading and helping me work out who this mystery band is!