What Makes a Good Band Press Shot, and What Doesn't
Most of the band press shots that come across my desk in Brisbane fail for the same reason: they were made to prove the band exists, not to say anything about it. Four people against a brick wall, arms folded, someone in sunglasses. It is a photograph of a roster.
A good press shot does a narrower, harder job. It has to sit at the top of a gig listing the size of a postage stamp, run across a festival poster, survive being cropped square by a blog editor who has never heard the record, and still look like the music sounds. That is a lot to ask of one frame, so it helps to be clear about what matters and what doesn't.
What matters, first, is that it reads small. If the picture only works at full size on a good monitor, it doesn't work. I look for a simple shape: bodies grouped tightly enough to make one silhouette, a background that falls away, a tonal contrast you can see from across a room. Busy laneway walls and fairy lights look generous in person and turn to porridge at thumbnail size.
Second, it has to hold a crop. I leave room. Editors will cut your picture to whatever their layout demands, and they will not ask first. A frame with a little air around the group gives them somewhere to go without amputating the drummer.
Third, it should carry the record's temperature. A band making slow, wet guitar music should not look like it has just come off a basketball court. This is mostly a matter of light rather than styling. Hard noon sun on a Queensland footpath makes everyone look awake and slightly cross. Late, low light makes them look like they have been up all night, which may or may not be true but is often the point. On film the difference is even plainer; Portra under a soft overcast feels like one kind of song, HP5 pushed in a dim room feels like another.
Fourth, the people in it should look like they know each other. This is the part I can't light. I spend the first while doing very little, letting the band talk among themselves, waiting for the moment someone forgets the camera and leans on a shoulder. Directed closeness looks directed. The real thing has a slackness to it that you only get by waiting.
What doesn't matter, or matters less than people think: matching outfits, a famous location, having everyone's face perfectly sharp. A good press shot can have one member half turned away. It can be grainy. It can be shot in a car park in Woolloongabba. Recognisability comes from the shape and the mood, not from a passport-photo clarity on every face.
And what actively hurts: props that explain the band (instruments are usually a mistake outside a live shot), jokes that only land once, and anything that looks borrowed from whichever band is popular this month. The picture will be in circulation for a year or two. It should age with the record, not with the trend.
I shoot most press work on 35mm, partly for the look and partly because a roll forces a decision. Thirty-six frames means the band and I both stop performing for the camera rather sooner than we would with a card that never fills. By the second roll they have usually stopped posing altogether, and that is generally where the picture is.
The best press shot is rarely the one the band expected. It is the one they recognise.