Peter Neill is a
music industry video director and photographer from the United Kingdom who has
worked with famous bands and musicians such as Queen, Justin Timberlake, The
Script, U2, Elbow, Rick Astley, Will.i.am, Gary Barlow and Ennio Morricone.
Peter Neill has also worked alongside many popular studios, magazines, and
music producers such as Sony, Colombia Records, Epic Records and even Billboard
Magazine. The photographic work of Peter Neill focuses on documenting scenes of
emotion, movement, colour, and lighting using his specific editing techniques
to emphasize the atmosphere of his photographs almost as though he was looking
at the venue and the audience through the eyes of the performer as well as occasionally
from the perspective of the audience.
As someone with an
interest in the specialism of music, performance, and concert photography, I
decided that looking at and researching the work of Peter Neill would be best
regarding learning a lot more information about this area of photography which will
then be developed further in my later interviews with music industry, concert,
and performance photographers. By researching and analysing
the work of Peter
Neill, I discovered that his style of photographing the performers, audience
and the venues relies a lot upon the formal elements of shape, tones, and
colours by focusing on capturing the lighting, colour and motion that is going
on around him, focusing on the creation of atmosphere through his work.
Many of Peter
Neill’s photographs are kept central using the rules of thirds, ranging from wide
to close-up compositional angles to document the performer, the audience, and
the venue and the set up of screens and lighting around the stage and how these
factors have been deliberately arranged and structured prior to the concert to
have a major impact on the atmosphere of the show and venue. Since Peter Neill
documents his photographic work from the perspective of the audience or the performer,
he often creates this feeling of elation, joy and high energy focusing on the
emotional expressions of the audience, the performer as well as the movements
and motions of the performer on the stage. By also focusing on the emotional
state and atmosphere of the audience and performer, Peter Neill, creates these
intense and almost intimate photographs, narrowing the space of the large venue
to just this interaction between the performer and their audience.
shapes which are captured within his photographic imagery and created by the
stage designs and lighting of the live performances and concerts. The
photographer uses the stage designs and artificial coloured lighting around the
stage and venue to created silhouetted images of the audience and performers
and even creating leading lines of focus within his photography through the
strobe lighting and how it highlights and illuminates the performer on the stage.
The silhouetted photographs of his chosen audience and performers also create
stark contrasts from the dark shadows and outlines and the bright colours of
the stage lighting and screen displays. This in turn draws the attention of the
photographer’s target audience further into the imagery, drawing their focus to
the colours and shapes of the lighting and screen displays visible within the
photograph he has created.
The way that
Peter Neill documents the formal elements of shape, colour and lighting within
his work is something that I feel really inspired by in regards to this
specialism in photography as I have always been interested in my experimentation
of my atmosphere and mood within my own live performance and music photographic
works and how I can emphasize the atmospheres that are captured through
capturing the colours and lighting of the stage as well as the emotional expressions
of the performer and the audience. I also plan to gain further information from
the work of Peter Neill by interviewing this photographer later within my work
to learn further details about my specialism in photography.
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