Liaison · Free tools for concert photographers · No. 1
The letter that asks for a photo pass, written so it reaches the one person at a show who can actually say yes. English and French. Nothing to sign up for.
Most photographers ask the artist. The artist almost never controls the pit.
The promoter does — the company whose name is on the listing, not the band's. They hold the accreditation list, and they close it a few days before the doors. Meaning a good letter sent to the wrong inbox is the same as no letter.
This writes the letter. Finding the promoter is the part below it.
Why it's this short. A promoter reads it on a phone between load-in and doors. Every sentence it doesn't have is a sentence they don't have to skip.
Use this one in France, Belgium and Switzerland even if the promoter's site is in English. Writing in the room's language is read as knowing the room.
Once. A second chase costs you the next show as well as this one. Giving them an easy way to say no is what gets you remembered kindly for the date after.
It usually is, at first, and it is rarely about the work. Lists are short and the wires and the local weekly are on them already. Reply once, in two lines: thank them, and ask to be considered for a future date. That single reply is what moves you from a stranger to a name they've seen twice.
The photographers who shoot regularly are not the ones who write the best letter. They are the ones who wrote to the same promoter four times across a season.
The shoot plan — tell it the size of the room and the set time, and it gives you the lens, a starting exposure, and the clock for the first three songs, including the minute you leave the pit. Free, same as this one. The rest are at liaison.vision/tools.
One a month. Follow @liaison.vision to catch the next, or join the Liaison list — the list for photographers who want the shows and the people behind them in one place, Paris first.
The promoter of that specific show, in most cases — the company presenting the concert, whose name appears on the listing. Venues sometimes handle it for their own programming, and at festival scale it moves to a press office. The artist is almost never the right first ask, even though they are the easiest name to find.
Ten to fourteen days. Earlier and it sits unread beneath the show that's happening this week; later and the list is closed. For a festival, four to six weeks.
Yes, and saying so plainly works better than implying otherwise. What a promoter is deciding is whether the photographs will be good and whether you'll be easy to have in the pit. A portfolio link answers the first. The terms paragraph answers the second.
First three songs, no flash, shoot from the pit, and a release to sign. Acknowledging them before anyone asks is the clearest signal in the letter that you have done this before.
No. It runs entirely in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere, and there is no account, no cookie and no logging on this page.