Great music photography is essential for your press kit and promotional efforts, but having your artist photos at your fingertips and ready to go might help get you promo opportunities you weren’t expecting.
In the recent post, “Last-minute bandmate – What to do when your key players can’t play the gig,” I wrote about the benefits of having all of your music in written and recorded form, consolidated and easy to share at a moment’s notice, just in case you need to call a replacement musician to fill in with your band last minute. That same sort of preparedness elevates not just your efforts as a bandleader, but your press outreach as well, especially when it comes to artist photos.
Powerful images are a key part of any band or artist’s press kit, and here are a few previous Disc Makers Blog articles that speak to that point:
How to take a great band photo and headshot
Make your music photos tell your story
6 key ingredients for creating good photos
The art of music photography
In addition to making your web page pop and your Facebook profile grab eyes, great artist photos can help in more subtle ways, especially if you have them accessible and ready to send out instantly.
Prime placement
For a recent show in New York City, I was able to attract the interest of a neighborhood-specific online publication called DNA Info that agreed to mention the event in their recommendations for the weekend. The website is widely read, so this was a very cool development.
When the reporter asked me only for the details on the show and a brief description of the band, I made a point of including a couple of artist photos, like the one above, even though she hadn’t specifically requested any images. “Just in case,” I wrote.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that, a few days later, not only was our gig mentioned as promised, but our photo was front and center for the entire article; it was also the image that showed up as the thumbnail when the article was linked to on Facebook. Needless to say, this placement got a lot more attention for the show than a simple, text-only listing, halfway down the page, would have. It happened largely because I acted quickly and took the initiative to make sure that the writer had instant access to our best press pictures.
Unexpected opportunities
As a former music magazine editor, I can speak to the power of a well-crafted artist image from the publishing side as well. With deadlines looming and pages to make look amazing, having easy access to strong artist images is often a life saver for editorial team members. Sometimes artists who have great images end up with better placements on the page than those who don’t, simply as a result of necessary layout and design decisions. If you can be the artist to provide those great images at the right time, you may find yourself receiving certain types of press visibility that you had never expected. Your great images, delivered in a timely manner to the right hands, could also help you land prime placement on festival posters, season brochures, presenter websites, venue advertisements, or other cool places.
To make sure it’s easy to share your own band or artist images when you need to, create a single folder that contains all of your best and most recent press photos, both in high-res for print (generally 300 dpi CMYK file for print) and low-res for web (could be 72 dpi, but safer to go with 150 dpi RGB file) and at various sizes.
Whenever a situation comes along where you can imagine potent images being useful to the person with whom you’re corresponding — whether it’s a writer or booker, presenter or marketing person — offer to provide pictures. And if your gut tells you to, be preemptive and just send along one or two, “just in case.” You never know where those great images, placed in the right hands, might take you.
Do you have any stories where having great press images has opened unexpected doors for you? Tell us about it in the comments section below.
Read More
Last-minute bandmate – What to do when your key players can’t play the gig
How to take a great band photo and headshot
Make your music photos tell your story
6 key ingredients for creating good photos
The art of music photography
Plan for your great headshot
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