Nobody owes you a photo pass. Here is how to ask for one anyway.

// Annelies · 5 min read

If you have shot a few club nights and want to get into the bigger rooms, at some point you will send your first accreditation request. Most of them get no reply. This is how the thing actually works, so you can send fewer of them and land more.

Who decides

More people than you think, and not always the same one. For a touring artist the photo list usually belongs to whoever holds the artist: management, the label, or the tour publicist. But the promoter who put the show on has a list too, the support act's team can sometimes add a name, and depending on the room the venue's press office has a say of its own. Four doors, and on a given night any of them might be the one that opens.

So do not send one email and wait. Work out who the four are for that show, start with the artist's side, and if that goes quiet, try the next one. Our first pass ever, Sam Tompkins at Lido in Berlin in 2022, came after two no's.

Festivals are different. There a press office decides, months in advance, and the list is built around outlets they already know from last year. First-timers get in through the gaps, and the gaps close early.

What they want to see

Two things, and they work together: an outlet and a portfolio.

→The outlet is the reason to let you in. A publication that will run the photos, with a name and a URL. It tells them the pictures go somewhere.
→The portfolio is the reason to trust you in the pit. It tells them you will not be in the way and the frames will look like the artist. Make sure the first thing on it is your best live work, not a wedding, and that it loads on a phone, because that is where it gets opened.

An outlet with no portfolio reads as a favour for a friend. A portfolio with no outlet reads as a fan with a good camera. Both together read as press. And if you have only the second, it is not hopeless: a strong portfolio and something useful to offer the artist or the venue has opened doors for us more than once. It is just the harder road, and it is the road where the answer is more often silence.

Then, in this order: where it will be published, when, who you are, what you have shot. Three or four lines. The link does the rest.

Why the answer is often no

The pit for an arena headliner has room for eight to twelve photographers. The wire agencies take the first few. The national paper, the big music sites and the promoter's own photographer take the rest. Then there is you. Most requests get no answer at all, and for the biggest names that is the normal outcome. It is not a verdict on your work, it is arithmetic.

That does not change completely after shooting for a while. A few published shoots do not make the next pass automatic, and neither do a few years. Every show is a new list, drawn up by someone who did not see your last one, and there are more good photographers asking than there are spots. The ones who last are the ones who treat every yes as a favour, take the no lightly, and ask again next time.

Clubs are a different sum. A 300-capacity room has a pit for three, sometimes no pit at all, and the manager is a person with an inbox who answers. You shoot the whole set, not three songs, and the band walks past you at the merch table afterwards. That is where names get built, and it is where the arena promoter sees yours for the first time.

The artists who say yes when you are starting out are giving you something, and it is worth remembering that. Deliver what you agreed, on time, and put the work where people can see it: your own channels first. When an artist or a venue shares it with your name on it, that reach is real, and it is how the next promoter learns your name. It is not payment, and it should never replace it. It is just how this part works.

When you send it

Early. Arena lists close a week or more before the date, festival lists months. Subject line with the artist, the venue and the date, so it can be found again. Keep the mail shorter than you want to. Do not follow up more than once, and do not ask friends to ask on your behalf; that gets you remembered for the wrong reason.

If it is a yes, read the conditions. First three songs, no flash, sometimes no pit at all but a spot at the desk. Turn up on time, do what the pit manager says, leave when told. Those people talk to each other.

If you do not get in

Go anyway, if you have a ticket. Most venues allow a compact camera without an interchangeable lens, and a decent point-and-shoot from the fifth row at a club show gives you frames you can publish. Check the venue's rules first: "no professional cameras" almost always means "no detachable lenses", and the door staff decide what that looks like on the night. Do not argue with them.

Four honest lines about the night and a handful of frames from the crowd is a piece. It is a smaller piece than the one you wanted, and it is the one that exists.