Concert Photography Lesson 8

 

 

How to make money off your photography—that is the single most complicated question for most photographers, and it is a question with no easy answer. Our industry is really flooded with amateurs and fanboys who will shoot for free. So, how do you make money in this environment?

 

 

Well, there is an easy answer and a difficult answer. The easy answer is that you don’t make money. The hard answer is that you can make money, but there are a lot of things you have to do to make it.

 

 

So, I will say the obvious thing right here: you will make almost no money from the musicians themselves. They expect the photos of themselves to be free, and they have been getting the photos for free for so long that it is ingrained in their minds. They will not pay for your shots—end of story. No matter what you do, they would rather use a bad photo of themselves than pay for your photo. More often than not, they will steal your photo and use it without your permission, and since they are more famous than you, you have no real means to fight against this, as they could turn their fan base against you.

So, I will say this again: forget about making money from the artists. Those days are gone, with some rare exceptions, such as being hired as their official tour photographer or if they want your photo for merchandise.

 

 

So if you cannot make money from the artists, where can you make money from? Well, there are many places—some traditional sources and some a little different from what most people think. We will start with the traditional sources of income, which are magazines, newspapers, and websites. They are the traditional employers of photographers and will pay either per shoot or per image. Paying per image is becoming the norm, though.

How this works is that the publication will send a few photographers to an event and only pay for the images they print. Pay-per-print is much higher than pay-per-shoot, but there is always the risk that you may shoot and edit the entire show and make no money. Pay-per-shoot guarantees you a payday for your shooting, but the amount will not be a lot.

However, getting work at a newspaper or magazine is not the ideal place for a beginner to start because most publications will require a solid portfolio. They want to see what you can do, and if they have faith in your ability, they will get the pass for you. You still have to pay for your own transportation and accommodation, but if the publication is sending more than one photographer, you can travel together to save money.

 

 

The second way to earn money is to shoot for the event organizer. Concert or festival organizers will require images for future events, as well as for their websites and social media accounts. These jobs usually pay well, but most organizers will only employ one photographer per event, and it is usually an experienced photographer they trust and have worked with before. You usually have great access to shoot anything you like, but you are expected to get the best shots out of all the photographers there.

 

 

So, the first two ways require experience to make money. So how do you make money if you have no experience? Well, that is difficult, but the easiest way is to get paid per image by blogs, websites, and fan sites. They will not get you a pass; you will have to work out your own pass. However, they need photos quickly from an event, and they will pay for it. But they will pay the least out of all the traditional methods.

I usually use all three methods on my shoots and generate my income from multiple sources. There is no big payday in this industry unless you have been in the job for years and get hired as a staff photographer for a huge touring band. The rest of us have to find creative ways to make money doing the job we love.

 

 

Now onto some of the more unusual ways to generate income from shooting concerts and festivals. The first way is to sell prints. I often get asked for photos of an artist by their fans. They want to post them on their social media accounts or have a print to hang on their wall or dorm room. I don’t give out photos for free; I will charge them for the image. Not a lot of money, but I will charge them depending on who they are, what image they want, and what they intend to do with it.

If they want it for social media accounts, the fee is really small. If they want a physical print, I keep the fee small and cover the cost of the print and shipping. These small amounts might not seem like a lot, but they add up at the end of the day. The one exception to this rule is fan clubs. Most fan clubs have some money, as they sometimes charge their members fees, so I will charge fan clubs about ten times the amount that I will charge a normal fan.

At the shows, I usually take a lot of fan photos and stay at the event after it has ended to take portraits of some fans meeting the band. If they ask me, I will shoot the shot, but they must pay for it. Again, not a lot of money, just enough to keep the money coming in. Sometimes, there are ways to get paid that don’t involve money. Fan clubs can sometimes pay you by getting you better access to an event, maybe backstage or even into the dressing room. Getting paid doesn’t always equal money; sometimes you need to trade your images to get better access to make a future payday.

But these kinds of opportunities happen very randomly, and you have to jump at them when they present themselves.

 

 

 

Now, because I am in China and I am usually the only foreigner in the pit or on stage, I sometimes earn revenue through sponsorship. I will usually approach a development company in the city where I will be shooting and offer to wear their company shirt for a fee. I will be seen by a crowd of 5,000 to 50,000 people, so most companies are willing to pay for this. But this will only work in special cases and not all the time. If I were shooting in the West, then this would never work, but here in China, I can do this and get away with it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now, I have said that you cannot make money from artists directly from your photos, and that is true. Most artists will never pay for your images that are intended to go onto the internet. But sometimes artists need images for interviews, posters, and CD covers, and many musicians will need photos for their sponsors. Their guitar, drum, or keyboard companies will need photos for advertising, and this is where you can get money from the artists—or I should say, from their sponsors.

Most of the sponsors will ask the artist to try and get the images for free, but if you hold your ground and refuse to let the artist use the photos for their sponsors, the sponsors will pay for them. The artists may put a lot of pressure on you to give the photos for free, but this is one time that you need to hold your ground. I have generated a lot of income from this over the years, and it is a consistent source of income.

I will license my image to the sponsors for the artist for a period of one year, with an option to renew the license for a small fee in the future if they require it. Many companies will continue to renew their licenses at the end of the one-year period. But in order to do this, you need to have good images that both the artist and the instrument company want. It has to be a unique shot that someone else does not have. If it is just a normal pic that five other photographers shot in the pit that night, you will not get paid for it.

 

 

The picture below caused me so much grief here in China. His guitar company really wanted to use this photo in their advertising, but they wanted it for free. I refused because they are one of the oldest and most popular metal bands in China, and their guitar company is a large Japanese company with lots of money. Both the artist and his guitar company put a lot of pressure on me to give them the photo for free. When I refused, they tried to get me blacklisted from shooting events. In fact, I am still blacklisted from shooting the 303 Metal Festival in Beijing because of this, but I am sticking to my guns here. If artists are doing well and making lots of money, and their guitar company is making a lot of money, then they have got to pay for their photos. I would never do that with an up-and-coming band, though. You have to know which battles to pick and fight for.

 

 

Now, I advise you not to try and charge artists for the use of your images on their social media accounts. If they want to use your images, just make sure they credit you and link back to your social media account or your website. Ensure they do it, and call them out if they don’t. Also, don’t forget the staff at the event—the sound engineer, the lighting engineer, and the stage managers. They will all need photos of themselves at the event. Shoot them while they are working, talking, or smoking. Your camera should always be working at an event, capturing potential income sources.

 

 

The last bit of advice is to forget about selling merchandise. I have seen a lot of photographers try to sell t-shirts and bracelets at festivals, but I have never seen anyone sell a lot of this stuff. Most photographers who try end up losing a lot of money. If you want to do this, you have to have a big personality and a huge social media following. I guess that unless you have more than one million followers on each of your social media accounts, you are too small to even try this. Don’t waste your money on manufacturing.

 

 

But a type of merchandise that can do well for you is if bands decide to print their own merchandise to sell. Bands like to sell T-shirts, posters, and CDs, and they need images for this. I have no problem working out a deal with the artists for this. You can either license it per image for a period of time, or I prefer to take a small cut of the money per item sold. You can only do the second option if you trust the band, though.

 

 

I think this will be one of the last articles in this series. Music season is nearly here now, so I really don’t have a lot of time to write these blogs at the moment. I plan to make some more articles in the future, and I have some ideas about what I want to write about, but finding the right photos for these articles takes hours. So, I will only be doing some articles when I have some downtime. I do plan to re-edit the lessons in the future and find better example photos. I may combine all the lessons into a single PDF for download as well.

But until I get around to doing that, keep shooting.

Shaun.