Photography for Bands and Artists
Promotional portrait and performance photography is a key tool for bands and solo artists who want to reach an audience across a wide range of media.
It’s worthwhile for an artist or band to commission and license great photography. By collaborating with a photographer, the artist has control of their visual identity and creates more opportunities for media coverage. Being seen more frequently in a positive way is a valuable thing and a worthwhile investment in your career. Having quality images at the ready can enhance your publicity efforts, and in my experience, can create their own opportunities in and of themselves.
Promotional images are created with the following usages in mind:
Press and media requests – This is probably the most important. Most music magazines and blogs rely heavily on free images supplied by the artist or their label, especially now that none of them seem to have money to create their own images. A good, creative image can really help with more visually prominent coverage and more coverage overall.
Band / Label Websites – Promo portraits are commonly used for a band profile on label websites or for main images on a band website – it’s also good practice to have high resolution images for download available directly on the artist website.
Venue and Festival Websites – The venues and festivals that book artists almost always want images of the band for their own online calendars, websites and sometimes printed promotional materials. Again, a band with a great picture is more likely to be featured in the graphics of a calendar or group poster.
Show Posters - A great image can be adapted to a promotional flier. A lot of bands and labels will design a generic poster for a tour that local venues and street teams can have printed and fill in their local information.
Social Media – photos for profile images, background images and galleries.
Pricing- Pricing is flexible and depends on the needs of each particular project.
pricing factors:
Production Costs: Every shoot is designed around client needs, there is no ‘cookie-cutter’ process. A wide range of resources can be brought in depending on your needs and budget: props styling, hair, make-up, clothing stylists, special locations, rental studios, and assistants.
Level of the Artist: The uses described above will change in scale depending on whether the band is an unsigned independent, signed to a small indie label, signed to a notable indie label or signed with a major label. The types of uses are generally the same, but the frequency and scale that they are used can vary widely.
Duration of License: The value of the work is partially a function of time. In order to keep initial pricing low, the period of usage is limited. For uses like website and social media, it’s usually fine to use these as long as you like. Practically, a band or artist will be evolving during this time and will need more up to date images in the future.
The basic formula: Rate for Promotional Music Portraits = (V x L ) + P
V = Basic value of the promotional license
L = professional level of the artist
P = production costs