Hire me for New Year’s Eve

If your venue looks out over the London New Year’s Eve fireworks, I can photograph the display for you. For commercial clients it’s a flat £2,000, including VAT.

I can only be on one roof at midnight, so I take one booking a year.

What I need from you

A clear view

Roof access, or a balcony. I need a clear, unobstructed view from the camera lens to the fireworks, and that means being outside.

What I don’t and won’t do is shoot through glass. Windows and glass walls are grubby on the outside, however clean they look from indoors. Window glass isn’t optically sound, and it can throw reflections across the frame. There are ways to cut down the reflections, but nothing gets rid of the dirt, and the pictures pay for it.

I’m height safety certified and carry public liability insurance, so I can work safely at height. I’ve worked on rooftops all over the city.

Where the pictures are going

Tell me how you plan to use the pictures, and I’ll shoot and edit with that in mind.

If there’s a space on your website waiting for a picture or a slideshow, send me its dimensions, in pixels if your web designer has them, and I’ll make sure the pictures fit it properly.

Let me know which social media channels you’ll post on too. Instagram, X and Facebook each compress pictures differently and favour different shapes, so I edit separately for each. If you’d like a panorama people can swipe through on Instagram, I can do that, and I do the same with the video.

The test shoot

Before the night, I visit your venue for a test shoot. It shows me the view and tells me exactly which kit the job needs, so on New Year’s Eve I bring only that, instead of hauling every lens I own across London on the busiest night of the year.

You keep the pictures from the test shoot too.

On the night

I photograph the display and film it in 4K.

If the test shoot shows your venue has a fabulous view, I’ll arrive a few hours before midnight and get to work on it before the fireworks start.

Getting into London on New Year’s Eve is hard work. Getting out is worse: queues for the Underground, and trains so full you wait for the next one. I’m usually home around 6am.

Belt and braces

I’m properly paranoid on jobs like this, and I check everything twice. I keep a written checklist in my camera bag, built up over the years I’ve shot the fireworks, that tells me exactly how to set up to capture as many shots of the display as possible.

I bring plenty of batteries and usually run two cameras, so if one fails, the other keeps going. Each camera saves every shot to two memory cards at once, so there’s always a backup.

Making the most of your view

If your venue has a spectacular view, I won’t waste it. I’ll photograph every landmark I can see, and shoot panoramas and super-high-resolution pictures that print very large, big enough for a trade show banner or a billboard.

That works especially well for hotels and apartment buildings, where the view is part of what you’re selling. You get pictures of it at its best, on the night everyone is looking at London.

The price stays the same either way. If all I get is the fireworks, it’s £2,000. Everything else the view gives me comes at no extra cost.

After the night

Fireworks pictures are best posted while people are still talking about them, so I aim to deliver within 24 hours, and sooner if I can.

Everything arrives sorted and labelled by where it’s going, so you can see at a glance which pictures are for Instagram, which are for your website and which are for print.

Using the pictures

The pictures are yours to promote your business however you like, for ever. Put them on your website, your social media, your trade show stand or a billboard, and send them to the trade press.

That covers everything I deliver: the fireworks, the test shoot pictures and any extras from the night.

The only things I ask are that you don’t sell them, don’t upload them to stock photo sites like Alamy or Adobe Stock, and don’t pass them on for anyone else to use, including through an image library your partners or clients can dip into. The people working on your own publicity, like your designer or printer, are fine. If the pictures are used beyond what we’ve agreed, I’ll charge a licence fee for that use.

Under UK law the copyright stays with me, but that won’t get in the way of anything above.

Crediting me

Wherever the pictures appear, please credit me. On social media, tag my account for that platform with an @ in the caption, or tag me in the picture, wherever the platform allows it. My accounts are linked at the bottom of every page on this site. In print and on websites, “Photo: Stewart Marsden” is perfect.

If you send pictures to a magazine or newspaper, please pass the credit on with them.

What I do with the pictures

I’ll write a post for my blog about the night, saying who I was shooting for. If any of the pictures earn a place in my portfolios, a good skyline shot, say, or a couple of the fireworks, they’ll go up on my website too.

I’ll post a few on Instagram, Facebook and Flickr, and I’ll always tag you and say who I was shooting for.

Refunds

Once it’s paid, the fee isn’t refundable, with two exceptions, and both are on me.

If I get it wrong, you get your money back.

If I have to cancel because I’m ill or there’s an emergency, you get a full refund, and you keep the test shoot pictures.

Everything else is out of my control, and by then I’ll have put in the time and the work. Fog and smoke can hide the display, but I’ll still be on your roof all night, and you’ll still have the test shoot pictures and anything else the view gives me. If the display is cancelled, I’ll still shoot the view as best I can: the panoramas, the super-high-resolution pictures and every landmark I can see from your venue.

If you cancel, I’ll have kept New Year’s Eve for you, and I may not be able to book anyone else in your place.

Booking

Book as early as you can. I’ve had enquiries about the fireworks as early as the summer, and jobs like this tend to go early, when social media managers are planning the year’s content. Don’t let that stop you getting in touch closer to the date, though. I may have had a cancellation.

Full payment is due before the test shoot. You’ll get a short booking agreement setting all this out before you pay.

To book, or to ask me anything about the night, get in touch.