The DO’s and DONT’s for BANDPICTURES
In the last 10 years we’ve been working with hundreds of artists, and this included thousands of features in magazines, on TV and on the internet. From small local fanzines to specials on MTV. What’s oh so important are good bandpictures. And yes, European media has different taste. Here’s some advice from us, for you!
NO GOOD:
- Hands in pockets. Don’t stand there with your hands in your pockets, that’s lame. So don’t.
- Laminats. So passé. Yes it’s great you went on tour 3 years ago opening for Motorhead on 3 dates in the USA, but we don’t have to see that on your bandpictures. So, where them with pride at shows, but not on bandpictures. You’ll look like an idiot.
- Keep it real. Don’t add castles, dragons, fire, weird 3-d backgrounds and all that. Do that when you are so famous you can hire the graphics guy that did Wall-E, but right now just keep it real.
- Following up on the above comment, do you also start laughing when you see pics of idiots posing in weird places, and they think they are oh so cool? Well we do! Ok, not all styles are the same, hardcore is not americana and blues is not metal, some are more evil than others, but don’t go kneeling in front of a goat holding a huge sword and all. Unless you wanna go for fanzines only.
- Same for guitarplayers with their superexpensive custom Gibson. Make some good solo shots of him/her and the guitar, but keep the instrument out of the bandpicture.
- Stay in range of the camera. Even when you’re in a band with 5 or 6 people, make sure you’re all on the picture, but not a mile away!
GOOD:
- The more pics you (or your record company) can send to media the better. We always say more pics = a bigger feature. As long as the ‘no goods’ from above stay out off course! A few different studio shots and a live shot here and there are great. Too many bands and recordlabels only have 1 bandphoto, that sucks. You’ll get a small feature if you’re lucky. Send 2 or more great pics to a magazine or a website, and they’ll turn it into a nice (bigger) feature.
- The hotness up front and the ugly bastard(s) in the back. Every band has a hot guy or gal. Use it! Don’t put your uglies up front. When your bandleader is an ugly bastard, and insists on being in the middle and up front in a pic, go look for a new band.
- It’s good to have bandpictures, but also make 1 or 2 pictures with the lead singer only, the main guitar player, or the two main guys or gals in the band, for example those who write all the music or that do all the interviews. In case of features, media likes to add a picture of the musician they spoke with next to the feature.
- Make sure you have horizontal and vertical pics available for media. You never know what they’re gonna use it for. It can be for a small third page feature in a fanzine, but it could also be used on the videowall next to the mainstage at the Reading festival. Get it?
- Make sure your bandpictures are big and sharp. No one will print a stamp sized pic of 100K, make sure they are 300dpi.
- Because you don’t wanna piss off anyone by crashing their inbox, keep the 300 dpi pics around 2 to 4 MB per picture. If your are so succesfull that you’ll end up on a cover of a magazine, keep a huge picture available (20 to 25 MB) which you can always send via ftp or Yousendit.
Have fun!
