Omega Events brought me back to Spanish Landing Park in May for the twenty-third Gator by the Bay, which made it the first festival I have photographed in San Diego already knowing what I was walking into. Gator is a four-day festival on paper and a three-day festival on the harbor, because starting this year, Thursday is a free kickoff party held across town and the park itself runs Friday through Sunday. Friday opens at four in the afternoon; Saturday and Sunday start at eleven in the morning, and across those three days the festival puts more than a hundred performances on seven stages and goes through ten thousand pounds of crawfish brought in from Louisiana. California does in fact have everything, including a little bit of my love for Louisiana once a year!
A festival is a hundred concerts stacked on top of each other with the walls taken off, which is why the work of a San Diego concert photographer and the work of a festival photographer are the same job at different scales. A single show gives you one stage, one set, and an audience that stays put for it. Gator gives you seven stages running at once, sets that overlap all afternoon, and a crowd that is free to walk away in the middle of a song and frequently does. Live music is a through line in my work rather than a departure from it, and my concert photography portfolio covers where else it has taken me, including SXSW, Bluesapalooza, and the Stone Family Field Trip.
Coming back to the same festival a second year is the part of this job that almost never gets written about, because the recap posts all get written as though the photographer arrived fresh. Year two is a different assignment, and ideally, the client gets a better gallery out of it.
What a San Diego Concert Photographer Knows in Year Two
In the first year of any event, a real share of your time goes into learning the place. In the case of Gator By the Bay and Spanish Landing Park, the park is long and narrow along the harbor. The stages sit far enough apart that walking between two of them costs you the end of one set and the start of another. I spend a lot of time at large festivals trying to make sure that I map my time, space and schedule intentionally. I rarely hop on the staff golf carts, because doing so might catch me a great image of guests dancing, shopping, eating food, or interacting along the way.
This year I already had the map. I knew which pairs of stages I could realistically cover back to back and which pairings meant giving one of them up, so the schedule I built as the afternoon went was built out of real distances instead of guesses. I knew where the second line formed and which direction it moved, and which tree to climb on instead of the porta potty for that high vantage point of it starting. I knew which sponsors needed what, I knew when the golden light hit the trees at each spot, and I knew which repeat acts I personally didn’t want to miss (ahem, Mrs Sue Palmer!).
None of that is glamorous, and all of it is the difference between a gallery that covers the festival and a gallery that covers wherever I happened to be standing. I worked the same number of hours both years, but in the first one a real share of them went to working out where everything was and how long it took to get there, and this year that time went into photographs instead. As the sole photographer responsible for turning in a suite of images that reflect both advertising needs and return on investment for sponsorship, time, energy, and efficiency on festival grounds this large is paramount!
The other thing a second year buys is that the people running the festival already know me, especially since they also run Bluesapalooza, which I also photograph for them. Production, stage managers, and the crew at the food court had all seen me work the site before, which is worth more access than any credential is, and it means nobody spends any part of the weekend deciding whether to trust me near their stage.
The San Diego Music Festival Got Bigger for 2026
Gator added two things this year that were not on the schedule in 2025. Thursday opened with a free Cajun Kickoff Party on the Sheraton’s Lanai Lawn, instead of a fourth shortened evening on site at the festival grounds. Saturday then ran slightly later than normal with Gator After Dark featuring Dumpstaphunk as the headliner, which held the night open until ten instead of sending everyone home at the usual hour.
The rest of the bill ran the way Gator always runs it, which is deep rather than top-heavy. Chubby Carrier, Geno Delafose and French Rockin’ Boogie, Rick Estrin and the Nightcats, the 44s with Kid Ramos, Euphoria Brass Band, Whitney Shay, and Sue Palmer were all on the schedule, along with a long list of San Diego acts who play this festival every year and are part of why it works.
The Acts I Photographed at Gator by the Bay 2026
Four are worth calling out, and the first of them is the year-two argument in miniature. I photographed Kimmi Bitter at Gator in 2025 and again this year, and the second time around I already knew her vintage country staging and how she works an audience, which meant I was making pictures during the first three songs instead of using them to learn what I was looking at. That is the same advantage the whole weekend runs on, just at the scale of one set.
Sue Palmer played Saturday, and she is as close to a San Diego institution as this festival books. She has been the city’s Queen of Boogie Woogie for decades. She has led her Motel Swing Orchestra for more than twenty-five years. AND! (yes, there’s more!) She is in the San Diego Music Hall of Fame. A festival built on Louisiana music that also has room for the woman who has been playing this city’s piano longer than most of the crowd has lived here is a festival with its priorities in order!
Dumpstaphunk was also Saturday, headlining for “Gator After Dark”, with Ivan and Ian Neville leading it, which puts an actual branch of the Neville family on a bill that spends the entire weekend paying tribute to New Orleans. There is a difference between a festival that programs Louisiana music and one that brings Louisiana musicians, and Gator routinely does the second thing.
Rick Estrin and the Nightcats played Sunday. Estrin has fronted that band since it was Little Charlie and the Nightcats, he is one of the great living blues harmonica players, and he is a deliberately theatrical performer in a way that is a genuine gift to whoever is pointing a camera at him. I actually had the good fortune of photographing him years ago in Lake Tahoe in an open, multi-location weekend long Music Festival called Big Blue Music and Brews. It unfortunately only lasted one year, but it was a great event!
What Repeat Coverage Is Worth to the Client
A festival is not a controlled environment, and no amount of preparation makes it one. Sets overlap, the crowd moves, the second line goes when it goes, and nothing waits for the photographer. What preparation actually does is shrink the number of decisions I have to make cold.
That is why I would rather have a client for six years than six clients for one year each. Most of my corporate clients have worked with me repeatedly, and several bring me to four or five events a year in different cities, which means that by now I know their sponsors, their brand, and which twenty minutes of a three-day event their marketing team will actually use. Gator is the clearest example I have of what that looks like on the festival side, because the whole thing is visible in a single weekend rather than spread over years.
It also affects when you should be talking to me. Returning clients get first call on their dates, and when a client tells me their festival is the second weekend in May, that weekend is theirs before it opens to anyone else. I have written more about why loyalty is the foundation of how I work, and it is the reason a second year with a client tends to be better than the first for reasons that have nothing to do with the camera.
Booking a San Diego Concert Photographer
Three days on the harbor gave me 4 stages, a hundred-odd performances, a second line, and more crawfish than any one person should reasonably consider eating. Gator, along with it’s sister festival Bluesapalooza, is an incredibly fun event ot work, and I intend to keep coming back.
What makes me useful as a San Diego concert photographer is the same thing that makes me useful at a conference, because a festival asks for those skills with the schedule taken away. Sets overlap, the footprint is too large to cover from any one position, sponsors need their activation visibly working, and the marketing team needs images while the event is still something people are talking about. I spend most of the year doing that work indoors with a run of show in my hand, and a few weekends a year doing it outdoors without one. If you want the live music version specifically, my concert photography services page covers how I work a show.
If you are producing a conference, a festival, a brand activation, or any multi-day event in San Diego, tell me about it, or read how I work across this city as a San Diego event photographer.
You can also read my notes from the first year at Gator or see how a very different San Diego food event works in my Heritage Fire coverage at Liberty Station.
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