Photographer Interview - Peter Neill

 Interview with music and concert performance photographer Peter Neill, 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. He has also worked alongside popular studios, publications, and music producers such as Sony, Colombia Records, Epic Records and Billboard Magazine.

 

INTRO: So, a lot of the questions that I am required to ask for my coursework are about your experiences as a photographer, like how you got into photography or if you started off with assisting or if there is any information you could give for a basis of your work.

PETER NEILL: I started out and got into it in kind of a bizarre way. I had been working. I was living in Ireland and I had been working in IT for a long time. In fact, let me go back a little further, at home and I was living in the West of Ireland and my grandfather was living with us and I was around the age of nine years old. He moved in with us to our house in a place called County Mayo and he taught me a little bit with his SLRs, and stuff and I developed an interest until I was about fifteen. Then I got into computers and repairing computers and all that kind of stuff locally where I lived and I kind of stopped doing anything with photography up until about 2006. When at the time in 2006 everyone was buying SLRs again. Like you know, digital SLRs on Amazon and you know wherever else they could get them. It was a big fad. Everyone was buying them, so I brought one just to try to get back into it and pick up where I left off many years previously and it was great. I loved it and I started getting into it.

Then kind of in 2007 there was an economic crash kind of worldwide and Ireland was one of the country’s worst hit and so my IT work that I had been doing for the previous several years, that was really badly affected because there were so many people in Ireland employed in that sector and the bottom of that sector was falling out. So, I got into doing wedding photography which a lot of people did as their first way to get paid jobs and as much as I am grateful for the work that I got, like I did, 40-50 weddings in a couple of years, the stress of it nearly killed me because I found weddings so stressful like I’m not built for that and it was just wrecking my head and it was making me hate the camera because of the stress associated with doing weddings. Some people can manage it, love it, and can manage it and fair play to them it is just not my cup of tea. So, around this time I was also doing web development jobs as well and I kind of thought well if I am going to stay doing photography, I need to find a form of photography that I love, so I applied on the off chance.

A friend showed me an article in the newspaper by a graphic design company called Four5One and they were a graphic design company that was owned by U2 and a guy called Steve Averill was the lead graphic designer. He was also the guy who named U2 and designed all their album covers. I called them and I found out that they had a web development job contract going, so I applied for this contract, got the contract, and my only reason for applying for this contract was so I could meet Steve. I thought maybe he could be a way to get into music industry photography work. I had no experience in the area at all, but I applied for this contract, got the contract. In my second week there I met Steve and incidentally he caught me at my lunch break reading about him on my computer and tapped me on the shoulder and it was so embarrassing, and he was like ‘Hi I’m Steve’ when I was there – picture his mug on the screen – I was like ‘Oh my god’. But at least he was not my desktop background that would be worse! He was not, he was not, but could you imagine? So, I met him, and I showed him some stuff I had done by low light at weddings, like you know the dances after because low light photography is obviously a big part of concert work and I told him that I was keen to get into it, so he called up Bono. Little did I know about a month later I was photographing U2 in Don Valley stadium in Sheffield in 2009. My first ever gig, just doing the first three songs and it went well and I was lucky that some of the pictures from that ended up in the official tour book of that tour on the 360 tour. Then I did nothing in photography for a year then because apart from a few weddings there was so much hitting the fan at home in Ireland with the economy and stuff. But nearly a year later U2 contacted me and invited me to Paris to show their show in 2010, that one I ended up getting my first magazine cover, which is a Billboard magazine cover.

So that was a great start, but I was kind of aware at that point that if I want to turn this in a career, it was no good having – I mean it is nice having a portfolio from these two amazing shows – but two shows like that with phenomenal lighting do not really test your skills or they do not help you develop your skills because it is almost too easy. It is like shooting fish in a barrel in a way. So, I went back to Ireland and I kind of thought I use this portfolio to approach a music promoter called MCD who are now owned by Live Nation, like half the world. But they enabled me to start shooting at shows that they honour in and around Dublin and I was being paid parking money basically or if that, but it was like a couple of quid for parking and petrol or something like that and they were giving me introductions to artists and venues and that kind of stuff and that led to me working with my first kind of long-term official client with The Script. Who I still work a ton with, for this instance on Sunday with Danny from The Script. Shortly after that because I realized it was a very low glass ceiling of work, I could develop in Ireland in that field because of the record labels and so on are based in London and you kind of need to be present. So, I moved the family over to London in July 2012 then at that time I also got a job working for Apple because I knew it was going to take a long time to build up work over here. So, I spent three years working in Apple kind of part time repairing Macs and all that, working on the Genius Bar in the Regent Street store whilst building up my music clients and start working with Will.i.am, Gary Barlow, Justin Timberlake, Take That, Rick Astley and so it has been a bizarre route.

QUESTION ONE: Oh, that is great! It is helpful and a good insight into it as well especially since music photography is something that I have been interested in for a while and it is something that I have wanted to sort of get into as a specialism for my photography so that is interesting to know. So, based on all that, have you had any sort of other experience such as assisting or outside of your first experiences with music photography?

PETER NEILL: I have not done assisting in music photography but when I first got into wedding photography, I did a fair bit of assisting. How I got started in wedding photography it was local, where I lived in Ireland was a place called Wicklow, there was a local wedding videographer who I got to whack a couple hundred extra quid onto his package where he could offer some of his clients’ photography as well, but it was not the primary product, so it was a way to ease myself in. I did a couple with him and then I met another wedding photographer who then let me act as a second shooter. So, working as a second shooter in weddings is great because you get to spend your time for things like details shots and long shots with prime lenses, capturing moments of just people chatting and you have not got the pressure of doing the main group photos and stuff. It was a great way to learn but that was kind of the only assisting I did. Then when I got into doing the weddings as the main photographer it was then that I discovered how much I hated shooting weddings. But I started it for a couple of weeks, and you know it got us through a very rough patch, so I am grateful for it, but I would avoid going back to it if I can.

But assisting wise I have not really. I kind of had that bizarre baptism of fire with that U2 gig and then when I came back to Ireland and started working in these small venues like I was saying to try and build a portfolio. The music photography scene in Ireland, in Dublin, is very close knit. Everyone knows everyone. They socialise a lot together and I kind of benefitted a lot from insights from other people. I wasn’t formerly assisting them but I was getting a lot of on the ground help from other photographers who’d been doing it a lot longer than me on how to use your camera in the most effective way in a super low light and how low you can really bring your shutter to at a given focal length and all the considerations, whether it be lighting, weather, how much movement there is onstage, or whether they’re just really bad LED lights that just look horrendous on a digital image so that was probably the closest I’ve had to being an assistant or getting that kind of mentoring in the music world.

QUESTION TWO: You were saying about the LED lights and stage setups and everything. Do you have any kind of equipment that you would prefer to use regarding shooting in the music industry?

PETER NEILL: Yeah! I do not know if you know this, but I am the official Sony ambassador for the A7 S Range and I use the A7 S and the A7 R on the Sony cameras and the great thing about doing so for Sony is they do not tell me what to say so they do not care if I say bad things. But I wanted to start using Sony gear because their low light performance is incredible and to be honest the Mirrorless Technology, I think, is the way forward. So, whether it be Sony or whether it be Canon or an icon or whatever. I am a huge fan of Mirrorless Technology over DSLR now for music related photography. A few years ago, I would have been surprised to hear myself say that as I was quite snobby about mirrorless cameras when they first came out thinking that it was just a fad. But there is a lot of things which are a phenomenal help. One thing is you see exactly what your sensor is seeing, so it means you are not having to check the back of your camera to see if you have got the shot. So that saves time, which means you miss less, and it also means that when you take the picture, you take less photos because you know that you have got the shot you want. So, there is a great level of security in that and kind of allows you to be more on the fly and just capture those moments more easily.

Another nice thing about mirrorless technology is you have things like if you are using old lenses, or maybe you are specifically using manual focus because autofocus is not cutting it either because the lighting is bad or because you are trying a very particular artistic thing that autofocus is not obviously what you want for that. Focus peaking on mirrorless cameras is amazing whereas you adjust the focus you will see highlighted wherein that zed plane and the depth what areas are in focus or you know the diagonal lines for knowing areas which maybe are potentially overexposed for instance. I mean there are other reasons as well, but those are probably the top three that I can think of that right now mirrorless is the way to go.

As regards to lenses, I understand the importance of having a good zoom lens and in my job, you need to have it like whether it be a 2417 for example. But I also love having prime lenses and on a full frame camera I think you know a 50mil is a fabulous thing to have and equally an 85 and the great thing about those focal lenses if you are using a wide aperture, they give you a shallow depth of field which allows you to really, I guess, bring more expression and creativity to how you frame your shot. But the limitations brought about by not having too many options increases your creativity, because if you could just zoom in, click. When I first got into photography, I was just using the zoom lens and I was just like ‘zoom in, click. Zoom in, click’ and not working for the shop. Where when you have a lens, which is stuck in a particular focal length you must think about your composition more and move around and explore options that you would not have bothered with if you were on a zoom lens.

So I’m a big fan of limitations as a way to increase creativity and then that can manifest interestingly on a tour because if you’re working on a tour with a given artist the great thing about that is you can afford to spend, if you’re doing ten nights for arguments sake, you could afford to just do one night on an 85 lens and photograph every set piece with a lens you wouldn’t have actually used if you’d only had one night to shoot and capture moments that you maybe wouldn’t have expected to get so well or whatever. Then you might on another night use the 2470 lens and another night you might go around doing long distance stuff for the 7200 lens you know, but there are obviously times when I am just shooting for the one night or just for three songs, so in those scenarios I have two cameras around my neck. Obviously, a lot of the time I am lucky to be able to do that and thankfully because of Sony, I do not pay for the cameras, which is amazing. They give me the cameras, but I generally on one camera I have the 24 to 70, but it is that kind of ‘will do anything’ lens and it is handy if the lens you have on another camera is not suitable for that moment. Then on the other camera I will have maybe an 85 or 50 or about 7200 lens or it might be an old Helios Russian lens with an adapter, which I kind of love this bizarre look they give you and allows you to between this kind of work horse running for 24/7 and then the more kind of artistic level of control that you get with prime lenses on the other camera. I mean I still do switch my lenses sometimes and I am yet to drop a lens which is a miracle. I was born with big hands and I am on the Sony and it is just that little bit smaller than regular DSLRs. The mirrorless cameras, I can change lenses with one hand, which is like a technique that I think my muscles have developed over time and I can do that well but with other things in life, I am clumsy.

QUESTION THREE: No, I totally understand that. I mean I have the DSLR camera for my course and the lenses are so heavy and clunky I am surprised that I do not drop and break them so many times. Okay, bias question considering that I am a fan of The Script and I might be upset if you do not say them. So, a lot of your work that I have seen online, like on your website and your Instagram from your music shoots, if you had to pick at least one or two of them, are there any that you absolutely have enjoyed working with and creating and you would say that these are my absolute favourite photos I have ever taken?

PETER NEILL: So, it is funny, I had a conversation with someone recently and we were talking about what it means to have a favourite picture and that there are two very different approaches from the viewer and the creator of the picture. From the creator of the picture’s perspective, what makes it a favourite might also be what went into it as much as the actual end results, because although the image to a third party might not be as nice, it is the end results. It might mean more to you, you know, if you put a lot of work into it. In a lot of ways, it is both. I guess my absolute favourite picture is probably, I do not know if you have seen it, but you might have since you are a fan of The Script, there is a picture where they are all jumping on stage which was a tour poster for 2014, No Sound Without Silence tour. That picture is probably my favourite because there was a lot, there was like four- or five-nights work that went into trying to get that shot.

They were touring their return with OneRepublic and it was my first time properly touring on the road with them and on the first night it was kind of almost an accident, I happened to be in the right place and I got just Glen and Danny jumping and on the bus after the gig, at the back of the bus it’s like a lounge, and we were all sitting back there looking at the pictures and I showed Mark and Danny and Glen and they were like ‘Oh my god, we have to try and get Mark in it as well! Do it again!’ So, the next night we tried it and we got Mark in it, but somebody had given Danny an Irish flag in the crowd shortly before it happened and what ended up happening was, we took a picture of Mark and Glen, but Danny was basically just a flag with legs, so we could not actually see Danny because he had the flag on his back. So just like no, it is no use.

So, the third night we tried it again, everyone did exactly the right thing except the lights at this moment of the song flicker a bit at the end of Hall of Fame and we shot where they were in the prime point height of the jump. The lights just happened to be off at that particular fraction of a second, so again no. Then the fourth night, I remember, I completely overexposed it, but the light had got left on. I had a chat with the lighting guy, and he stopped for this moment at the end of Hall of Fame, he changed the lights, so they did not strobe. But I completely overexposed where they were accidentally, there is a wheel on the back of the camera, and I jacked my ISO up so far and destroyed the image. Then next on the last night it all came together, and we got it just the way we wanted it. I mean I like the picture, but you cannot see Danny’s face which makes some people not like it as much as they would have. But from my perspective, it is probably my favourite picture because of the work that went into it if that makes sense.

But all the other favourites, probably this one time is when I shot the edge of Adam Clayton from U2. I had it at my very first gig in Sheffield, where there is a completely bizarre lens flare around him like a rainbow and it encircles him, you will see it on my Instagram if you scroll back, you cannot miss it because it is literally Adam Clayton with the bass guitar with a rainbow of a lens flare completely enclosing him, so it is cool. That is probably my other favourite picture and that was complete luck.

QUESTION FOUR: That sounds cool. I mean honestly, having seen some of your work for The Script, obviously I would say that that one would be one of my favourites just because of all the emotion caught within it through the lighting and the action and it is amazing. So, I know like obviously within music photography you must edit a lot of your works before, you show them to the band and the band management and until you are happy with them yourself. Do you have any favourite ways of editing, ways that you prefer using over other ones?

PETER NEILL: I will just explain my workflow. Its kind of evolved overtime and I’ve kind of settled into this happy medium and you are right, I like to avoid showing the client too many pictures before they are edited. Sometimes though it is unavoidable on tour because when they get on the bus after a great gig, they are sometimes just dying to have a look and they will sit beside you at the back of the bus and start looking at the pictures with you. So sometimes they get earlier access to the pictures than you would necessarily like, and you know it is even worse, the worst thing before I go on to explain the workflow, I think, and I have learned this mistake. The worst thing is, if you’ve got a picture that looks great in the back of your camera and you show it to the client and then when you put it on your computer and then you realise on the computer that it’s out of focus and you’re like ‘Oh no I showed it to the client and they’re expecting that image’ and you’re just dreading that email back to you or whatever it is and they’re like ‘Oh yeah, where is that cool picture you were showing us on the back of the camera?’ A little bit of you dies inside you can never get back and you are there with like unsharp mask trying to sharpen their eyes a little bit or whatever the case may be.

But now my basic workflow for a standard gig where I am there working for the artist rather than working for like a press outlet or anything like that, when it is for the artist, I do not specifically have a need to get a certain number of images on the night out. I might get one out for socials, maybe it is like a bow shot or something at the end or something like that, but my work goes: copy them all onto the laptop but leave them on the memory cards, do not format the cards. Then on the laptop, I will quickly scan through them in Lightroom. Now I will import them all into Lightroom, I do not import using Lightroom’s own importer as it is too slow. I just copy them. I copy them with Finder into the folder then from the folder in Lightroom. I always create a new catalogue for every shoot in Lightroom because you know catalogues are not wielded down being too full, so it is one catalogue per shoot, so it keeps them nice and nimble and means if you have got catalogue corruption it only affects one shoot which is handy.

So that catalogues in the same folder and makes a project portable to move between machines, which is nice too. Or if you are downloading it from an online backup, you can download just that folder and you have got a log on the images, so that is a key part of my workflow. Then to scan through them I always start from the back of the catalogue and scan backwards rather an forwards because generally – particularly with mirrorless cameras – you’ll stop taking a picture of a particular scene once you know you’ve got the shot so you’re not taking as many insurance shots, so if I scan backwards through I’ll see a particular shot and it’s the first one I’ve seen, the last one I took and very often that’s the one I’ll end up using because I stop after I know I’ve got the shot. So, as I scan through them quickly in library view instead of develop view, I am hitting 5 on the keyboard to label them as ones I want to come back and look at and scan through quickly that way, rapidly tapping on the left arrow or using the scroll on the mouse if using an external mouse or whatever the case may be.

I have another thing that I do. I do a lot of manually handheld panoramas with an 85 mil lens with it set to 1.4, so I’ll do like seven or eight sharp panoramas during a gig which are handheld but you have this shallow depth of field with an 85 mil lens so you end up with a really wide equivalent focal length image but has the shallow depth of field of our prime shot so they look mental and I look for images that are part of those cause I always attempt to do them and it could be that only half of them will work, I’ll label those images with three stars and then I’ll just keep going until I get back. Then I go to rated view, so I only see the rated images, which is either going to be three or five and I will literally go through them to see if there are any duplicates. The ones I am choosing between, the duplicates of the image I am going to use from that set up, I will hit 6 on the keyboard to give them a red colour code and then that enables me to basically know those are what I selected for editing.

Then with the one that are three stars within Lightroom, maybe there might be a six or seven image panorama selection. I’ll take all seven, rick click and choose create panorama and I’ll see if Lightroom is able to handle them without too many abnormalities and just because it can be a bit of time working on those, you kind of make a decision, is the end result worth the time it’s going to take to add to this and fix glitches and so on, that’s the only panorama thing I started doing in the last year and a half or two years. I can send you an example after if you want to see one. But then the last stage is going to picking up all the red images which are my edit choices and working on that. I mean sometimes you start with an image from scratch with Lightroom and there’s new colour grading features being added to Lightroom this weekend from Adobe, I have not checked it out yet which interesting. I am looking forward to trying that. So, I will start adding to them, also I have kind of presets I have made over the years for certain looks. Like a particular artist says ‘Oh. I love that look’ I’ll often in Lightroom create a preset where it’s named after them so like I have a preset in my Lightroom which is called Danny, Danny’s blue but there’s a particular blue which he loves and I’ve got another for Rick Astley and another one for Gary Barlow and people like that, so it’s just sometimes when you look at, our system loves it, it’s just nice you know just to be able to go to that and maybe use that as a starting point for working on an image and then tweak it further.

I tend to give clients often multiple grades of the one shot or give them a nice striking black and white and the other in colour and you know potentially another grade of black and white that was more contrasting. It really depends on the image. You know if you feel that it looks good in more than one way, if it just looks great in black and white and does not look particularly good in the others, I will give them the black and white. So that the basic workflow.

QUESTION FIVE: Oh cool! That is interesting to know. So, for anybody who is looking to get into the musical side of photography is there any kind of advice you would give to them or anybody just looking to get into photography in general?

PETER NEILL: The advice for someone looking to get into music photography, it can be a difficult field to get into and the only way to do it reliably, I think, there is no guarantee of success, but you must think outside of the box. I will give you some example you know I do not want to just be vague, but like for instance, at any given gig, when you look at that stage there are so many different companies and sets of interests that are represented by what you see. So, it might be the case that there’s stylists who are doing the hair and makeup or doing their clothing for a given artist, particularly for boy and girl bands and all that kind of jazz. There are lighting technicians who have installed the lighting, there’s production designers who designed the look of the show. You know, there’s maybe manufacturers of backdrops, there’s people who make the guitar amps or make the guitars and make the keyboard or make the microphones and all these different sets of interest and of course the band themselves, you know. So very often people think, oh I am just going to email the band or email their management or email their label but that is just one out of craploads of options.

And often bizarre enough, emailing the labels to try and get access to a press pass for a gig is usually useless because a lot of people do not know it, but labels make nothing from the music. They make their money off album sales, so they have next to no interests. The artists make the shows. So very often, if you are wanting to go by the artists often your best route is through socials. Find out the social media for who represents the artists, who looks after their Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and all those kinds of gems and contact them because these companies are often a retainer, an order. They have to have experts around, but they have to do X number of posts and make the artists look goof and communicate with the artist suggesting copies go with posts and artist will often have final control over it, may actually do the posting, but they have a social media firm that helps strategize. So, going to approach the social media firms instead of the band can be quite effective as the band can say ‘Oh I like this photographer, can we bring them along?’ and they’re asking, they are trying to improve what they give the artist, so it’s better than you asking direct, so that’s one way.

Another way is to approach, and what nobody does is, to approach for instance, the stylists. Or it might be the case, dancing instructors or stage design companies like there are so many companies in the UK who are doing all these different jobs that are critical to the live music industry. Who do not often have photographers and ask them to come along to the shows to document their work, but the reality is I know from almost everybody I work with, it is like a family on the road and people know everyone. I know it, pretty much any of the artists I work with that, I mean it very rarely happens, but I know that if such and such company that does the stage design or the backdrops, they asked the band management, do you mind if we send a photographer to one of the shows to take some shots? The answer would be ‘fine. No problem, go for it’ and the only question that would come up and pretty much has always come up is ‘can we see the pictures to make sure we’re happy before they go out?’

That gives you an introduction, that means you can get CDC’s in and looped in and the band might want to use the pictures so you might be able to ask to use some of them, you might be able to sell them or at least you might be able to get another shoot done for the band. So, the great thing about that is you have this one entry into an ecosystem with lots of other options, and so it is the case of this, approach it from a bit outside of the box. Another example is companies that make merchandise. Who make tour books, like there is a big company all firebrand makes, maybe they will support the merchandise for artist t-shirts and tour books and for arguments sake with all these days you have bands coming back who have been gone for ten or fifteen years. If I am not only am I missing an old portfolio of them that I have shot but never made a penny from, can I give it to them and say you want to buy some of these for use for the next comeback tour.

Equally you can approach them and say ‘I see you do the merchandise for X or Y or Z, I’m happy to shoot that gig for X or Y, can you ask for a pass’ so it is another angle. So yes, it can be hard to get into the music industry, but it is a hell of a lot easier once you start looking at a bit more creatively in terms of how you approach it.

QUESTION SIX: Following on from that is there any sort of photography that you’ve taken with any of the bands that you work with where you haven’t particularly liked a certain experience? I mean, obviously I know you have probably been on quite a few tours with quite a few people.

PETER NEILL: A couple. I mean there are minority experiences are like that. I mean, experiences that I have not liked are pretty much all one or two categories. What it might be is incredibly little sleep, you know cause you might be working just super late and then you know particularly on a tour, you might be working super late and then you need to be up early the next morning because you need to go with the band to a radio show, but where the band have all got to sleep and everyone else during the time you’ve actually been having to edit X amount of content that needs to go on Facebook in the next day or so? That can be a struggle sometimes. But at the end of the day, it is worth it. But it is not like you always dislike like that aspect it is just, you know, it is your tenth night on a tour or fifteenth or twentieth night. It could be tiring.

And then the other side is occasionally this. This is none of my current clients, but I have had a couple clients who I have worked with only once or twice where I have massively had problems with the people once I got to know them and it maybe what they stand for or what they believe or how they treat their fans. One artist who I only worked for once and I went to a meet and greet, and this fan had been waiting for hours and the treated the fan with such distain. I was just like ‘I’m not working with you again’. It’s not, you know, it’s just like why would I? But that is a rare thing dude like you have counted very few particular people. That artist now has gone on to become much bigger and I hope wiser because they were quite early in their career when this happened and I think maybe the fame had gone to their heads a little bit, but I am hoping that, that particular artist may have had a cop on.

There was another incident I had. I could tell you the name of one of the artists, but I cannot tell you the other. This is a very positive experience with Justin Timberlake. That was a reaction to a negative experience that we both have. I got into the artist food tent with Justin after or before a gig which was in the afternoon and we got into grab a basic cup of tea or coffee or whatever it was, and Justin sat down, and I was getting the drinks and this other artist came over to me and said, ‘what the **** are you doing in here?’ This artist was not well known, no one here was well known as Justin Timberlake and they said, ‘what the **** are you doing in here this tent is just for artists?’ Then Justin Timberlake just saw all this happening and just stepped up and tapped him on the shoulder. The guy turned around and Justin said, ‘he’s with me so **** off!’ So, it was the best thing. So that was both a negative and positive experience in one but yeah unfortunately Justin was like ‘never tell. Never tell anyone who that was.’ So, I must honour that.

QUESTION SEVEN: So, considering I know you work with a load of music artists and bands, is there anyone like say in the future that you would want to work for and do a shoot for? If you had to pick any band you know?

PWETER NEILL: I would say, I mean I have shot them, but only like in a festival, not specifically working for them. I would say Foo Fighters. I am very lucky that one of my clients who I know the best, like The Script, there is two clients who I know really, really the well are The Script and Rick Astley. Both are clients but whether it be Rick or any of The Script no one would bat an eyelid if I turned up at their door for a cup of tea, like I’ve that kind of relationship with all those guys. At some point because Rick and Dave Grohl are now such good friends, at some point I know I will get to do a shoot for the Foo Fighters because I will just basically get Rick to introduce me to Dave and so at some point, I hope that they are such good mates now, so I am crossing everything via Rick I will be able to do that at some point.

QUESTION EIGHT: Okay, so I know you said that most of your experiences with have been really positive, so do you have much input in terms of how the image that you create gets used by management? I guess does the image go straight over to management and they just own everything?

PETER NEILL: A fair amount, yeah. I mean the longer you work with the band the more you get involved like with The Script, Rick Astley and with Elbow I will kind of choose the images and generally I will choose the edits. Which ones get used and often I will suggest you should maybe think about using this for just that and once you get more involved you have more kind of input which is great. Certain artists who maybe you work with for the first time or it was a one off or something you obviously have a lot less input. One important thing to mention, you mentioned ownership, so with almost all the artist I work with I still own all the images, right? I have done buyouts with where they buy the ownership of the pictures, meaning that I cannot even display them in a portfolio without their permission. So thankfully for all the artist, there’s only a couple of artists that I have done that with. But with those artists I have retained that I have gotten written permission from them to still display images on my website and on my social media, but I cannot monetize those images in any way. I mean, generally, it is only very rarely that I sell prints in a way, but they work directly for artists. It is not really a thing that I do so it is not much of a problem either way.

But generally, I mean with The Script and Rick Astley, I am involved to the point where I get to go to the meetings as regards to what the lighting is like as well and stuff like that and get to suggest things for that, which is great to have that level of input and go along to rehearsals and stuff when the light is being experimented with and so on. So, it is great to have those chances before to work at a virtual show. When I say virtual, like, all the lighting is there and there is a whole run through but there is no audience, even the band are there but you just get to go anywhere you like and experiment and stuff which is great. Some venues have certain points are which known for getting particularly great shots like the Shepherd’s Bush Empire, if you go to the very top balcony in the very back and if you have a fish-eye lens you can get a very striking shot at the stage. Every venue, especially older ones with a bit of history, they have all got these little sweet spots.