The band’s first photo shoot

Great band photos can be taken in the studio, on location or at a live event, but someone has to take them. Cost, quality and relevance are the three factors that every band must weigh for any photo shoot.

Professional photographer Nick Schnelle’s has had great photo shoots with both professional bands like Fall Out Boy and his hometown bands. It’s not about the popularity of a band that makes great shots but showing what makes a band unique.

Getting the right photos

The first thing a band needs to decide is where to take photos.

“A lot of the bands they see in AP [Alternative Press Magazine, Inc.] are redundant,” Schnelle said. “It doesn’t have anything to do with the band.”

Having a photographer take pictures of your band playing Warped Tour will make for great photos for a scrapbook, but it might not yield the best photos.

Schnelle suggests driving around town scouting out ideal locations for photos and ideas for what the theme of the photos might be.

“I don’t look in AP for ideas,” Schnelle said. “I get my ideas from other sources like photojournalism, portraits or even weddings.”

Sources Schnelle recommends getting ideas from non-music photography like cityscapes and street photography.

When bands do decide to take photos of a live event, they need to be aware of the limitations. Live concerts can show what musicians are best at, but the drawbacks can include bad lighting, little time to shoot and uncontrolled factors like fan presence.

Finding a cheap photographer

Schnelle charges less than $30 an hour for band promo shots when he is working for himself.

For the band The Actress Adorable their first photographer was a woman they knew who took senior pictures for the local high school. The band got licenses to use any photos they wanted for just $15 each.

Jesse Barnes, guitar player for The Actress Adorable, said he has found all of the band’s photographers from connections the band has made. And, this has helped keep the cost down.

Schnelle prefers photos shoots he gets from word-of-mouth because he can charge much less money than if he was working for a recording studio.

DIY

When bands do not have enough money for a good photographer they could try to do it themselves.

According to Schnelle any budding photographer needs to learn whatever camera they are using inside and out. Even if it is a point and click digital camera, decent pictures can be taken.

Online the resolution of photos is very low so even five megapixel cameras can take decent pictures. A 6.1 mega-pixels camera is capable of taking 3000 x 2000 pixel photos.

“Don’t get sucked into megapixels,” Schnelle said. “Try a camera out, and go for ease of use.”

It also valuable to not just learn about good photography but to steal great ideas. Atlanta based photographer Zack Arias has a large portfolio of band photos on his site and his Flicker.com account.

Learning the very basics of photography to specifics on almost anytime can be found all over the web like digital-photography-school.com and photojojo.com.

After the photos have been taken they need to be edited. Photoshop is the worlds most used photo editing program for white balancing, cropping, sharpening and whatever else one could need to do to a photo. Unfortunately the listed price of Photoshop CS4 is around $700.

For bands short on cash the lighter version Photoshop Elements can be found for less than $100 at Amazon.com. It is easy to use and has all the basic functions for photo editing.

There is also free software like GIMP or Picasa, but bands need to make sure that they will put in more time when they spend less money.

Contact the writer of this article at brett@detone8.com.