With months of live gigs and festivals cancelled, a Hastings live music photographer has built a portfolio of portraits capturing the local music community in lockdown.

Sara-Louise Bowrey has over twenty year’s experience taking pictures of bands on stages from the smallest pubs to the largest festivals in the world – as well as taking them into the studio for promotional shots. Now she’s expanded her portraiture work – and as a result, has been able to publish a web-gallery that is growing daily as more and more people want to be included in the project.

And it’s not just musicians – venue owners, promoters, and sound engineers are all getting included too.

She said: “Live music is so important to Hastings – it’s one of the reasons I moved here a few years ago. In that time I’ve made so many great friends in the scene and I really wanted to keep showcasing their work during this time when they haven’t been able to perform.

“I started with just a handful of shoots a week, but I’m now typically getting asked to do three or four a day. I try to keep them short – just ten to fifteen minutes at most as I’ve always loved the spontaneity of taking pictures on stage and I wanted to bring this to this portrait project.”

The gallery has been published on the Hastings Flyer website – a local listings service that also publishes reviews, photos, and videos of the Hastings music circuit.

As well as just the photos each person has been asked to say a few words about what they have done or learnt about themselves during lockdown. The full gallery can be found at www.hastingsflyer.com/category/news/