Thredbo Blues Festival 2025 took place over three days and nights on a weekend towards the end of January.  This was its thirtieth anniversary and also my twentieth anniversary of photographing the festival (though I have attended all but three).

Click an image to see it larger. At the bottom of this post there are links for Top 25, Top 100, Selected Monochromes, All Images and All Previous Thredbo Festivals. Bands in this post are ordered according to when I took most images of each, for a sense of how the festival progressed.  (Recent Posts, Top Posts, Subscribe and Search are at the bottom of each page.)

In the images below, each band has a link to all their images (in colour) in JAlbum.  You can then select an image or run a slideshow.

• Click closed triangle to start slideshow.
• Exit when slideshow finishes (otherwise it goes through all subsequent images)

JAlbum can also show you all images from previous Thredbo festivals. Note that previous years may have smaller images, 640×640 from 2006 to 2011 and 1024×1024 from 2012 to 2021.  It is 1900x1900px from 2022.

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Darren Jack (17).

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Rory Ellis and Christian Marsh (6).

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Roshani (7).

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James Southwell (filling in for Shane Pacey)

Bondi Cigars  (16).

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Frank Sultana.

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Stan Mobbs.

(Taken from low down near the floor, holding the camera out and using the flip-out rear LCD screen to compose).

Frank Sultana Blues Band (23).

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Jeff King, Ron King, Stan Mobbs, Rosscoe Clark,Steve Edmonds.

Foreday Riders (6).

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.Jeff Lang (19).

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Fiona Boyes, Mark Grunden, Tim Neal.

Fiona Boyes (7).

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Steve Edmonds, Glen Elliott, Graham Burns, Clayton Doley.

Steve Edmonds Band (10).

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Julz Parker, Davo Fester, Genevieve Chadwick, Mick Malouf.

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Genevieve Chadwick.

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Davo Fester.

Genevieve Chadwick (23).

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Bek Jensen Duo (5).

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Julz Parker (actually playing here with Genevieve Chadwick).

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Minnie Marks.

Hussy Hicks (23).

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Mick Malouf, Rick Melick, Lisa Ohlback, Ewan Lund, Greg Ohlback.

Liza Ohlback and the Mercy Train (26).

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Nathan Cavaleri (18).

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Alex Damon, Reno Torrisi, Alek Necko.

Necko (16).

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Harry Brus.

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Leeanne Paris, ?, Philip Laxton, Darryl Ford, Ross Johnston, Billy Barnett.

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Tony Boyd (also playing with Mighty Reapers).

Sydney Blues Society Jam 1 (19) and Sydney Blues Society Jam 2 (37).

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Ray Beadle and Jonathan Zwartz.

Ray Beadle Two Tones (6).

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Jesse Redwing.

Technical note:  There’s a wheel on the camera that controls aperture that is easy to accidentally move when you’re not shooting.  I was accidentally shooting here at f22 because I inadvertently moved that wheel.  Normally you’d never do this shooting live music because that lets in one hundred times less light than wide open and diffraction at that aperture reduces resolution by 50%.  Using auto ISO, I’ve done this a few times before and ended up with ISOs of over 50,000 which can be very noisy.  This time the light on Jesse was so bright the ISO was only 1250.  On the other hand, the contrast was so extreme that there was no detail at all past the drummer.  Just black.  This also applied here with other exposures at more moderate apertures.  Yet it works well enough so that all of that doesn’t matter very much and the depth of field is astonishing.

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Ewan Lund.

Jesse Redwing Band (17).

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Dave Brewer, Robert Susz, Antero Ceschin, two dancers from the audience, Ray Beadle, Clayton Doley.

Mighty Reapers (21).

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Brandon Dodd, Owen Campbell, Jotham Garrett, Manuel Roll.

Owen Campbell Trio (18).

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Jeremy Berg.

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John Jakob Gwilliam.

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Audience.

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Kane Dennelly, Jeremy Berg and junior drummers.

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Kane Dennelly, Jeremy Berg and John Jakob Gwilliam.

19 Twenty (33).

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Leanne Paris.

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Mal Eastick.

Mal Eastick and Leanne Paris Band (33).

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Darryl Ford.

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Leesa Gentz (of Hussy Hicks).

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Julz Parker, Nathan Cavaleri, Leesa Gentz, Aidan Glover, James Southwell.

Keller Jam (37).

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Some years ago I included links to musicians’ web sites and music but no-one clicked on the links so I stopped doing that.  Easy enough to search if you’re interested though.

I took 4,000 images and produced 450 colour images in individual band portfolios, and also 60 monochrome conversions. I used Lightroom to select and catalogue images, and processed images in Capture One. In some cases I also used DxO PureRaw 4 for noise reduction.

Top 30 (35)

Selected Monochromes 1 (32), and Selected monochromes 2 (34)

Top 100 (114)

All Thredbo 2025 images (668)

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On the Thredbo Blues Festival Page, you will find links to images from all Thredbo Festivals I have photographed since 2006 (there are also links at the top of the JAlbum pages).

This Blog now has links to over 17,000 live music images (12,000 from festivals).

For images I have taken of any band since 2006, see the Musicians and Bands Page.

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