Casa @ Tinside Lido - 01/08/26

A six-DJ lineup at an outdoor swimming Lido on the Plymouth seafront, with house music playing out across the Hoe and members of the public able to tune in as they walked past. Plus one rule: nobody allowed in the pool.

Visually, it was a fantastic setting. Tinside Lido is already a pretty scenic place and with the sun setting over Plymouth, there was some lovely golden-hour light to work with.

Unfortunately, there was one fairly large thing getting in the way of all that. A massive marquee had been put up, initially in case the weather didn't hold out, but remained throughout the event for reasons beyond the control of the organisers. It wasn't exactly ideal from a photography perspective due to it taking up a surprisingly large amount of my viewfinder for most of the night. Meaning my initial plan of getting some shots from above looking down over the event was pretty much ruined instantly.

The timing of this one wasn't exactly perfect either. I'd been shooting Pretty Fly the night before, had my son's ninth birthday the following day, and this all landed in the middle of two particularly heavy weeks in terms of hours at the day job. Not exactly the ideal circumstances for taking on another shoot, but I'd never shot anything quite like this before and was keen to make a good impression.

I've met the guys from The Depo plenty of times over the years, when working with various bands at The Depo. This was my first time actually shooting for Ryan and Ben though, so I was keen to make the most of the opportunity. House music isn't normally the kind of show I find myself at either, which added another layer of unfamiliarity to the whole thing.

I'd been briefed to get wide crowd shots, with people going mad and generally enjoying themselves. Simple enough. Except when I actually started shooting, I had to spend most of the night trying to frame those shots around a massive gazebo taking up a sizeable chunk of the viewfinder.

Initially, I found it pretty difficult to get anything decent. The whole thing was completely different from anything I'd really shot before. None of the the usual stage, crowd and venue setup that I'm used to working in.

There was also another recurring challenge. People wanting photos together. Every few minutes, someone would ask me to take a photo of them and their mates. I'm also far too socially awkward to explain that I was there to photograph the event itself and the DJs rather than provide a group photography service to everyone in attendance. So I took their photos and figured I might as well use the opportunity to plug my Instagram while I was at it.

Once more people started filling the space, things became a lot easier. Suddenly there were more people to work with, more energy in the crowd and more opportunities to find angles where the gazebo wasn't completely dominating the shot.

To be honest, I would've liked to have delivered a little more with this shoot. Unfortunately, sometimes time constraints mean you can only do so much. Between everything else going on that weekend and the hours I'd already been putting in at work, I had to accept that this wasn't going to be a shoot where I could spend endless amounts of time working through every possible shot and idea. Luckily, The Depo have an in-house media person who was able to take some of the video clips I'd shot and edit them together, which meant my workload was significantly reduced.

If you want to see more of what Casa has posted and edited together from the event, you can find them on Instagram at @casa_events.

The feedback I've had from the organisers has been positive, which is always good to hear. Hopefully I've made enough of an impression to get the chance to work with them again in the future. Especially if they keep coming up with events this unusual.

Because while house music might not normally be my thing, I'm definitely up for photographing an outdoor swimming pool full of DJs and people having a good time again.

Just maybe with slightly less gazebo next time.

I'd love to hear what you think of my work, so feel free to leave a comment below.