The Amazons ‘21st Century Fiction’ (Leeds Beckett SU)
Introduction - The Queue
I remember the cold first.
One of those typical British winter evenings—grey, flat, and biting enough to make standing still uncomfortable. The queue outside stretched further than I expected, wrapping down the street and edging around the corner. Everyone waiting for the same thing.
Getting inside.
Partly to get out of the cold—but mostly because of what was about to happen.
There was a sense of anticipation running through the line. Nothing over the top, just that steady build you get before a show where people know what they’ve come for. When the doors opened, it moved quickly. Inside, once I’d made my way down to the barrier, things slowed again. That usual pre-show pause. Cameras out. Settings checked. People settling into position.
I ended up speaking with a few other photographers in the pit. The conversation drifted between shows we’d shot, what we had coming up, and how we’d managed to get access in the first place. Different routes in—publications, contacts, media teams.
It was a small moment, but one that stuck. Not just conversation—more a reminder of how many different ways there are to get into rooms like this.
On Paper
If you were to look at the ticket alone, anyone could see that this was already a very strong night.
The Amazons ‘21st Century Fiction’ UK Tour.
This one of those tours that already carries a certain weight before you even step through the doors.
On a personal note, this wasn’t the first time id be seeing The Amazons. In fact, I had the privilege of seeing them back in 2022, supporting Royal Blood. On this tour, they were performing in arenas and on a much bigger concert bill—but this proved to be a different kind of distance. This time felt closer. Their name on the ticket. Their crowd filling the space. Their night, start to finish.
An intimate gig.
Supporting them were Overpass—a band that, realistically, could have stood at the top of the bill themselves. There’s a confidence to them that doesn’t feel like they’re building toward something—it feels like they’re already there. Solid footing within the UK indie scene, and a presence that doesn’t shift just because they’re opening.
On paper, it was a strong night. The kind that sells itself without much effort. The kind you expect to deliver.
But for me, there was something else sitting underneath it.
Earlier that year, I’d sent an email.
Nothing overly polished. No guarantees. Just putting myself forward in the hope that it might lead somewhere—like most of these things start.
At the time, it didn’t feel like much. Just another message sent, another name added to a list, who would ever take a chance on a photographer that didn’t even have a portfolio ready
But standing there now, camera in hand, waiting for the lights to drop—it was hard not to connect the two.
This was where it had led…
The Night Begins…
The call came from security—photographers to the pit.
That alone changed the shape of the night.
Up to that point, I’d only ever shot from the floor or squeezed into whatever space I could find. This was different. A marked-off space directly in front of the stage. Three songs. No real margin for error. My fourth ever show—and already the biggest room I’d stepped into. Standing there waiting for Overpass to come on, there was a quiet disbelief to it. Not excitement in the obvious sense—more the awareness that this was something I’d only recently started doing, and now I was suddenly here, in front of a full crowd, camera in hand, standing in a space I used to watch other photographers occupy.
Then the lights dropped.
The opening chords of Slow cut through the room, and everything shifted immediately. I find that the first thing you notice in the pit isn’t the band—it’s the reaction. The sound hits from the stage, but the movement comes from behind you. The crowd surges forward slightly, not in chaos, but in recognition. Like everyone settles into the same moment at once.
I stopped thinking in full sentences at that point.
It became instinct.
Adjusting position without overthinking it. Watching for expressions. Waiting for small gaps in movement where a frame would actually work. I knew I only had three songs, but it didn’t feel like time pressure. It felt like rhythm. Like once you fall into it, you just keep moving with it and behind it all, the atmosphere of the room kept building. The whistles, shouts, that first proper release from the crowd as the night begins to properly open up. Standing between it all is strange—you’re close enough to hear everything on stage clearly, but you also feel the weight of hundreds of people just behind you reacting in real time.
You start to exist in both spaces at once.
On stage, you see the small things—the quick glances between band members, the first signs of comfort settling in, the shift from “start of set” energy to something more natural.
Behind you, the crowd becomes its own presence entirely.
And for those first few minutes, you’re right in the middle of it.
Not fully part of either side—but completely aware of both.
Filling The Room
The atmosphere shifted the moment the intermission track hit the PA.
Everything turned blood red.
The room didn’t feel like it was waiting anymore—it felt like it was holding its breath.
Then the opening chords of Joe Bought a Gun began to creep in.
At first, slowly. Almost deliberately. The crowd started to build with it, anticipation tightening with every second, like everyone in the room knew what was about to happen but didn’t want to break it early.
And then it hit.
The Amazons.
The switch was immediate.
The first distorted guitar from Matt and Chris cut through the red light, and at that exact moment I caught Chris’s expression change—his face tightening into a full stank grimace as he locked into that first chord. No performance for the crowd in that instant, just pure reaction to the sound and energy he was creating.
You could feel it from the stage before your brain fully processed it.
The amplifiers hit differently in that space—less like sound, more like pressure. The floor vibrated slightly underfoot, and the air itself felt compressed as that first wave of distortion pushed through the room.
Then it broke.
The entire audience surged at once into movement. A jumping sea of red light and noise, released in a single moment that had been building since the doors opened.
What stood out wasn’t just the volume or chaos—it was the control behind it. The way they held everything back just long enough to make that release feel total.
They’d barely begun, but they already had complete command of the space.
The energy stayed high as they moved into Ready for Something—almost like a test thrown back at the crowd. A question without words: are you ready for this?
The lighting shifted here too. The deep red broke apart into more dynamic movement—less suffocating, more alive. It gave me room as a photographer to breathe with it, to follow motion instead of just reacting to it.
At one point, I turned away from the viewfinder for a second.
Just briefly.
And that’s when I saw the room properly.
The faces. The movement. The expressions caught somewhere between release and disbelief. Smiles, shouting, people completely absorbed in it. Even moments that looked almost personal—individual reactions inside something massive.
That was the moment it really hit me.
I didn’t know it then, but I was standing right in the middle of something that had quietly been building since I sent that email earlier in the year.
My full circle moment was seconds away—and I had no idea.
The last track I shot from the pit was In My Mind.
And by then, the room wasn’t just reacting anymore.
It was fully inside it.
The Full Circle:
Here we are.
The last song in the pit—and what a song to end on: In My Mind.
A rock anthem from The Amazons, and easily one of my personal favourites. But more than that, it felt like the perfect closing chapter to everything that had built up to this point.
The energy in the room didn’t dip—it climbed. This was the kind of track that lifts a crowd even higher, pushing everything already at its peak into something almost uncontrolled. And from behind the camera, you feel that difference immediately.
It was also where I got some of my favourite images from the entire set. Not because I was thinking technically in that moment—but because everything lined up. Movement, lighting, expression, timing. It was all happening at once.
At some point, I remember briefly lowering the camera.
Just for a second.
Not to stop working—but to actually take it in.
One of my favourite songs, being played in front of me, in a professional setting I’d only recently started stepping into. That feeling—being both inside it and documenting it at the same time—is something I don’t think I’ll ever fully forget.
It was also the first time during the night I genuinely thought about doing this properly. Not as something alongside other work, but as something I could actually build towards.
That’s what moments like this do—they shift your thinking without asking permission.
But even then, I could feel the set coming to an end.
And as it did, my mind started to drift backwards.
Back to April.
Back to a conversation backstage at a smaller show while shooting Silvertongue at The Key Club. Back to seeing the Amazons announce the 21st Century Fiction tour and noticing the Leeds date.
I’d seen them before, back in 2022 supporting Royal Blood, and something about that show had stayed with me. So when I saw the tour announcement, it didn’t feel like something to watch from a distance.
It felt like something I should try for.
I remember sending the email.
Nothing overly polished. Just honest. I explained I was new to live music photography, that I’d mainly shot weddings, but I’d started branching into gigs. I mentioned seeing them live before and how much their performance had stuck with me.
At the time, I didn’t expect much from it.
I got a reply within about twenty minutes asking for a portfolio.
And I had to be honest—I didn’t really have one in this space yet. Just a single gig shoot and a lot of intent. I was still mid-shoot when I sent the email, which probably wasn’t ideal in hindsight.
After that, things went quiet.
I assumed that was the end of it.
Then, months later, in October, another email came through.
Chris had replied.
A photopass had been arranged.
That was the moment it became real.
Standing there in the pit, camera in hand, watching everything unfold in front of me, it was impossible not to connect the dots.
This wasn’t just another show.
It was the result of a decision I almost didn’t make.
A reminder that sometimes you don’t need permission to try—you just need to put yourself forward and see what happens.
And I don’t take that lightly.
So to the band, and to Chris for making that opportunity possible—thank you.
It meant more than just a pass to shoot a gig.
From Further Away
Leaving the pit felt strange in a way I didn’t fully expect.
One moment you’re inside it—compressed space, constant movement, sound hitting from every direction—and the next you’re stepping back into a wider room that suddenly feels almost too still. The noise is still there, but it’s no longer surrounding you in the same way. It takes a second for everything to recalibrate.
Even after I’d come out of the pit, I didn’t really stop working.
I moved back into the crowd and started shooting from different pockets of the room—finding gaps, shifting positions, changing perspective depending on where the energy was pulling people. It felt less like “taking photos of a gig” and more like being inside it with everyone else, just interpreting it differently.
That’s what stood out most at this point.
You’re not separate from the audience in a room like that—you’re part of it. You’re reacting at the same time they are, just in a different way. There were moments where I wasn’t thinking about framing or settings at all, just watching the crowd respond while still lifting the camera instinctively when something aligned.
At one point, I found a balcony at the back of the venue.
It wasn’t something I’d noticed earlier in the night. A quiet upper level looking down over the entire room. From up there, everything changed again.
The chaos settled into patterns.
You could see the movement ripple through the crowd rather than just feel it—waves of people reacting in real time to what was happening on stage. From that height, the scale of it all made sense in a different way. You weren’t inside the energy anymore—you were watching it move as one connected system.
And on stage, everything was still happening in full force.
It gave me a moment to breathe. To actually take in what had just happened without a camera pressed to my face. A small pause in the middle of something that had been building all night.
That balance stayed with me.
Being able to step between roles—photographer, audience, observer—without fully belonging to just one of them. Enjoying the show properly at times, then stepping back into work mode when something caught my eye.
It was in that space, somewhere between all of it, that I realised how different this felt compared to where I started.
Not separate from the night.
Just inside it in a different way.
From Behind The Lens
Looking back on the night, what stands out isn’t just what I photographed—it’s how I had to move through it.
From the pit, to the crowd, to the balcony at the back of the room, the way I was shooting kept changing with the environment. In the pit, everything was instinct. Fast reactions, split-second timing, trying to stay ahead of movement that didn’t wait for you to think. In the crowd, it became more reactive in a different way—reading gaps, shifting position, letting the audience guide where the next frame might come from. And from the balcony, it all slowed down just enough to see the structure of it—how everything connected, how the energy actually moved through the room rather than just existing in it.
That shift in perspective is something I didn’t fully expect to learn so quickly. But it made one thing clear: shooting live music isn’t about staying in one approach. It’s about adjusting constantly, without overthinking it.
There was also a noticeable change in confidence for me personally.
Not in the sense that everything suddenly felt easy—but more that I stopped questioning whether I should be in those spaces. Being in a larger venue, working alongside other photographers in the pit, adapting in real time to a headline set like this—it all starts to feel less unfamiliar once you’ve lived through it. You start focusing less on “can I do this?” and more on “how do I respond to this moment?”
And then there’s the bigger lesson that sits underneath all of it.
A lot of this night traces back to something as simple as an email sent earlier in the year. No guarantee, no certainty, no real expectation attached to it—just putting myself forward and seeing what happened. Months later, that same decision turned into access, then into experience, then into a room I wouldn’t have otherwise been in.
That part matters more than it looks like on the surface.
Because it reinforces something I’m starting to understand more clearly: opportunities in this space don’t always arrive fully formed. Sometimes they come from being proactive when there’s no obvious outcome attached.
And live music photography itself, at its core, sits somewhere between control and chaos.
You’re not just capturing what’s happening—you’re reacting to it in real time, constantly adjusting to light, movement, and energy that doesn’t repeat itself. There’s no reset button. No second take. Just presence, timing, and awareness.
That’s what this night reinforced more than anything else.
Not just how to shoot a show like this.
But how to be inside it properly.
Final Thoughts
Nights like this don’t really end when the last song finishes.
They fade out in stages.
Even after leaving the venue, I could still feel it lingering—the sound, the pressure of the crowd, the constant movement of the room. Not as something loud anymore, but as fragments. A guitar tone that replays in your head without asking. A moment of light you didn’t fully process until after it was gone. The kind of things you only notice once everything else has gone quiet.
On paper, it’s simple to explain.
A gig shot. A headline set documented. Another night working behind the camera.
But being inside it felt nothing like that.
It felt layered.
Stepping from the pit into the crowd, then from the crowd up onto the balcony, the night kept changing shape depending on where I was standing. In the pit, everything was immediate—fast, instinctive, almost reactive. In the crowd, it became shared. And from above, it turned into something almost structured—you could see the entire room move as one connected response to what was happening on stage.
Each perspective revealed something different.
And somewhere in between all of that, I found myself not just working, but actually experiencing it.
That balance is what stayed with me most—being able to move between observing and being part of it without ever fully separating the two.
Underneath it all, there was still that earlier moment in the year. A simple email sent without any real certainty of where it would go. Not something I thought would come back months later in a room like this.
But it did.
And what surprised me most wasn’t just that it happened—it was how natural it felt when it did. Like I was supposed to be there, even if I didn’t fully understand that before stepping into it.
There’s a tendency to look at moments like this as milestones. Points you arrive at. Boxes you tick.
But this didn’t feel like an arrival.
It felt like a continuation.
A reminder that none of this happens all at once. It builds quietly—through decisions you don’t always recognise at the time, through showing up, through putting yourself forward even when there’s no guarantee of anything coming back.
From my first live shoot to standing in front of a full room at an The Amazons headline show, nothing about that path was immediate.
And I think that’s what makes it stay with you.
Not just what you saw.
But the fact that you were there at all.
