What I cover
Music and concert photography covers club gigs, support slots, festival sets and the quieter work around them: promo shoots, artwork and tour documentation. Most bookings start with one set in Shoreditch, Dalston or Camden, but I’ve shot everything from a three-song slot in a 200-capacity room to a full festival day.
Live shows and festivals
I shoot performance as it happens, no posed shots between songs. A full night across several acts gets the same attention as the headliner.
Promo, artwork and documentation
- Artist promo and press shots, on location or against seamless paper
- Album and single artwork sessions
- Backstage and tour documentation, load-in to last song
For a longer evening built around more than one act, my event photography from £350 covers launch nights and showcases where the set is one part of a bigger brief.
Prices
Concert and music photography starts at £300 for a single set or support slot. A full night covering multiple acts runs £450 to £700, and a festival day is £600, depending on how many acts and how much moving between stages is involved.
| Booking | From |
|---|---|
| Single set or support slot | £300 |
| Full night, multiple acts | £450–£700 |
| Festival day | £600 |
| Artist promo session | £350 |
| Album or single artwork session | £500 |
| Tour day rate | £550 |
| Press usage licence | £150 |
What moves the figure: set length, how many acts, and whether same-night press turnaround is needed rather than the standard 48 hours. Every job is quoted before I book it. See full pricing across every service for how the rest of my work is priced.
Shooting in venue light
No flash, ever, at a gig. It flattens the stage, undoes the lighting designer’s work, and gets you thrown out at half the venues in London. I shoot in whatever light is there: a 24-70 or 70-200 wide open, sometimes a fast 35mm in a tight room, ISO 6400, grain treated as part of the image rather than a fault to fix.
Red stage wash is the hardest light going. It clips a sensor’s red channel fast and flattens skin tone, so I underexpose slightly and recover in the edit rather than push highlights live. Some photographers bracket everything for HDR. I don’t, since there is no time between songs, and bigger venues run a first-three-songs rule anyway, so I front-load the wide shots rather than build to a chorus.
Three rooms I know well: Moth Club in Hackney, brutal above ISO 3200; the Windmill in Brixton, one par can lighting the drummer; and the 100 Club, red house lights that haven’t changed in years. See live music from London venues for proof. For seated performance, theatre and performance photography is the better fit.
Photo-pit access and accreditation
A photo pass is arranged between the artist or their management and the venue, not something I can request myself. Sort accreditation with the venue at least a week out; some rooms want it earlier for bigger shows.
- Artist or band name as it will appear on the guest list
- Venue and date
- A contact at the venue or promoter handling accreditation
Pit rules vary between venues, sometimes between two rooms in the same building. Most enforce the first three songs; some allow the full set. I work within whatever the venue says on the night, so confirm specifics rather than assume last time’s rules still apply.
Same-night press sets
For a release or a review already being written, waiting three days for a gallery is too slow. On request, I edit a small set on a laptop before I leave the venue, usually eight to twelve images, and send them that night rather than the next morning.
It’s not the full edit; that still lands within 48 hours. It’s the handful of frames a publication or the band’s own account needs while the show is still the topic of conversation, rather than fifty images once the moment has passed.
Artist promo and album artwork
Promo is a different job to a gig. There’s time to set up and direct someone, with no red wash to fight. A press shot needs to survive being cropped square for a listings page or stretched wide for a header, so I shoot with space around the subject.
East London gives plenty of locations without much travel: Brick Lane, the canal at Haggerston, industrial units round Hackney Wick. Indoors, one flash bounced off a low ceiling does most of the work. Most sessions cover two or three looks: a portrait set, an environmental set, and, if there’s a release, something built around the artwork. For individual headshots alongside the group set, portrait sessions from £200 covers that as a standalone booking.
Licensing for artists, labels and press
Who can use what depends on who’s paying. The band’s own social account, a label campaign, a magazine review and the venue’s own marketing are four separate uses, not one blanket permission. I set out what’s covered in writing before the booking, not after the invoice.
The common split is social use for the artist included as standard, with press or advertising use licensed separately. Anything contractual, especially for a label campaign, should be confirmed with a solicitor rather than taken as given. My post on how image usage rights work covers the detail.
When the venue photographer is enough
A small local gig with a house photographer already covering it doesn’t need a second person shooting the same set from three feet away. Fifty people in a pub back room, with the venue’s regular photographer there every week, needs nothing extra from me. I’d argue that’s money better saved than spent twice on the same shots.
Hire me when the images need to do a job afterwards: a release to promote, a press kit to fill, or a show nobody else is covering.
Send me the venue, date and set times and I’ll come back with cost and availability within one working day.