The three-song rule, and what to do with it

The three-song rule is the most common pit policy in live music. You get the first three songs of the set to shoot. No flash. After song three, you leave the pit.

Nine to twelve minutes of access. That is your whole show.

Photographers who plan that nine minutes go home with a portfolio. Photographers who spray and pray go home with 600 versions of the same frame.

Where the rule comes from

The three-song rule exists for two reasons.

• →The first is the artist's. Nobody wants photos of themselves an hour into a set, sweating, gasping, their make-up running. Songs one to three are the controlled window. The lighting is right. The performance is fresh. The artist looks how the management wants them to look.
• →The second is the relationship between the artist and the audience. After three songs, the cameras leave and the show becomes about the people who came to see it, not the people documenting it.

You do not have to like the rule. You do have to respect it. Stay past song three and you do not get accredited again.

When you shoot for the festival itself

If you are part of the festival's own team (not on assignment for an outside publication), the rule usually does not apply to you. You have access to the whole set.

The choice is when to use the pit. You can join the press photographers for the first three songs and stay after they leave. Or you can wait until the pit clears and shoot the rest of the set alone, which often gives you cleaner frames and easier movement. We have done both. The quiet post-press pit has its own pleasures: no jostling, no other lenses in your peripheral vision, you can move where you want.

If you are unsure which option your accreditation gives you, ask the press office before the day. The answer varies per festival.

How to think about each song

Three songs, three different mindsets. Use them however suits the show.

Song one: settle in

Your first job in song one is not the killer shot. It is settling.

• →Take a frame, check exposure, adjust. Get the artist's face correct.
• →Read the artist. Are they centre stage or moving? Do they favour one side?
• →Take a wide and a tight safety shot. If everything goes wrong after, you have a delivery.

Burst the whole first song and you end up with a hundred bad-exposure frames of an artist who has not warmed up yet.

Song two: commit

By song two the artist is in the show. The lighting designer has settled. Your exposure is dialled. This is where most keepers live.

How you spend it is up to you. Some photographers chase the chorus eye-contact moment and the lighting peaks. Others (us, often) commit the whole song to a single lens, then the next to another.

• →Close-up song: tight prime, fast aperture.
• →Wide song: wide angle with the audience in the frame.
• →Either way, do not swap lenses every fifteen seconds. You will be looking down at your kit when the frame happens.

Song three: insurance

Song three is your safety net, not your killer-shot song. By the third song the lighting has often plateaued and the artist might be in a quieter part of the set.

Use it for the frames you have not got yet.

• →The wide-angle stage shot with the crowd in the foreground.
• →The deep-pit corner shot showing scale.
• →A second wave of close portraits with your dialled exposure.

If song three turns out to be the best song lighting-wise, lucky. Shoot it like song two. But do not bet your set on that gamble.

When the rule changes

Some artists give you the whole show. Some give you one song. Some give you nothing and you shoot the second slot from the audience.

Check the email from the PR before you walk in. The default is three. The exceptions are written down in the same paragraph as the rest of the brief, and missing them is a mistake you only make once.

After song three

You leave the pit. Quietly. Through the side door if there is one. Do not block the front of stage for the security team's sightlines, do not loiter at the edge of the pit hoping for one more frame. The pass on your neck is for three songs, not three songs plus your luck.

What three songs really teaches you

The rule is a constraint. Constraints are why music photography is interesting. If you had thirty minutes, you would shoot lazy. Three songs forces you to plan, to read, to predict, to commit.

If you want to practice the three-song discipline without high-stakes shows, the Collective runs shoots where junior photographers work alongside us under real pit conditions. Apply if you want in.