MA Top 30 Professional: Rob Davidson

Photographer and Videographer
Rob Davidson Media

Eleven years ago, Rob Davidson left his job as program director for the VH1 Save the Music Foundation to become a full-time freelance photographer and videographer. Initially, photography made up most of his work.

“It was about 80 percent of my business until COVID, and then everything switched,” he says. As performing arts organizations scrambled to establish a presence on the internet, Davidson, a trained musician, was met with a huge demand for pre-recorded concerts and recitals and other online content. “Fortunately, I had been studying audio engineering and how to record music.

“There used to be such resistance, in orchestra musicians’ contracts, for example, to documenting performance, but that has changed. So videography has been the majority of what I do, although I still do concert photography and portraiture.

Based in New Jersey, Davidson concentrates on classical music and jazz and arts education. His clients include the Berlin Philharmonic, the Pittsburgh Symphony (where he started his career in the orchestra’s education department), the New Jersey Symphony, Miller Theatre at Columbia University, and Yamaha pianos.

His work captures musical performance with rich expressiveness, and for that he credits his own background with a bachelor of music in vocal performance from Truman
State University and graduate work in music education at Carnegie Mellon University. “I couldn’t do what I do if I weren’t a musician first,” he says. “Understanding the score and knowing where the important moments are going to be—these are crucial to getting the good shots. Moreover, being able to talk the language and communicate with musicians on their level makes a big difference. You can see their unease with having a photographer around melt away.”

When covering a concert, his goal is to stay out of the way. “When a musician says to me, ‘Oh, I didn’t realize you were here,’ that’s my gold standard. I’ve done my job that night.”