Time for tea, with S and T

It's my sixth year as the in-house photographer of one of Europe's leading metal festivals: Graspop Metal Meeting.
This year, Epica and Tarja were scheduled to perform on the same day. The downside of this is, that ladies this important in the business, are both billed pretty high. This time, their shows even overlapped. I mean: WTF?!
However, this didn't keep them from paying me a visit when I was at work.

Tarja asked me if I could do the shoot in her dressing room, so we turned her dressing room upside down, put up a backdrop and put the lights in place. Simone took a little longer to arrive, but that didn't keep us from having a great time. Tarja has become such an amazing friend, I love her to bits! We talked about things we won't mention here, but let's just say we had some great tea ;)
When our good friend Simone showed up, we had another little chat and started shooting. We shot for about ten minutes. Time was limited, because these ladies still had a show to do.

Anyway, later that day, just before RAMMSTEIN, Simone and I said goodbye and just a little bit later, Tarja showed up again. We went for a drink with our wonderful friend Eleonora (love you girl!) and we decided to check out RAMMSTEIN from the VIP area.

People sometimes ask me how I get to do shoots like these. This one was on my own initiative. I've done so much work with both Simone and Tarja, that I consider them great friends, which makes it a lot easier. I just give them a call if we can do this and if both agree, it's done. To me, it's more than just that. I simply love them for who they are and for what they're capable to achieve once you put a microphone in their hands. You should see Tarja right after her show. She gives it 800% and that takes a lot of her. Such passion!

All in all, not a bad day :)

With love,
Tim