If you’ve followed Nightlife Cambridge for a while, you’ll probably have noticed something: we don’t post on Instagram nearly as much as we used to. A few years ago, our feed was filled with photos from clubs, bars, and student nights across the city. Typically, the morning after an event, people would wake up, scroll through Instagram, and find themselves or their mates captured by a photographer — sometimes in glamorous poses, sometimes mid-pint, sometimes in the sort of embarrassing snapshots that became part of the fun. That was a big part of nightlife culture: you went out, you danced, you had a laugh, and then you relived it all the next day online.
But things have changed.
The truth is, clubs and events rarely hire photographers anymore. When they do, it’s usually for big one-off nights, headline DJs, freshers’ week, or themed parties that draw a crowd. But for your average weekly club night, the days of a photographer roaming the dancefloor are long gone. And the reason is simple: money.
Running a venue is more expensive than ever. Energy bills, taxes, licensing restrictions, staff wages — it all adds up. So when club owners look at where they can save money, photographers are one of the first cuts. It doesn’t affect the immediate running of the night, and in an era where most people have decent cameras in their pockets, it can feel like a luxury rather than a necessity.
Still, something important gets lost when you take photographers out of the equation. Those next-day photos were more than just content for Instagram. They were a record of the night, a way of bringing people together, and let’s be honest, a bit of free promotion for clubs and events too. If you saw photos of a packed dancefloor, you were more likely to want to be there the next week. The shared excitement of tagging friends, changing profile pictures, and reliving the night gave nightlife an energy that went beyond the venue itself.
Someone, maybe me, maybe the cynics among us, could argue that photographers have disappeared for another reason. It’s not just about saving money; it’s about what the photos would actually show. Clubs aren’t as full as they used to be. After the pandemic, with the cost of living crisis biting, fewer people are going out every week. A half-empty dancefloor doesn’t look great on Instagram, and it’s not exactly the best marketing tool for a venue trying to convince people that their night is the place to be.
So why don’t we just go out and take our own photos? Again, the answer is the same. If a night is quiet, if the vibe isn’t what it once was, then the photos don’t really capture the atmosphere you’d expect from a thriving club scene. And that’s a sad reality, one I hope changes in the near future.
It’s not all doom and gloom. Photographers are still around at the big events, the festivals, the touring DJs, the packed-out nights. On those occasions, you still get that old-school buzz of flicking through albums, tagging friends, and laughing about the chaos of the night before. But for the bread-and-butter club scene, the regular nights that keep a city’s nightlife alive, the presence of a photographer has become a rare luxury.
I think that’s a shame. Nightlife isn’t just about music and drinks; it’s about memories. Photos helped us bottle those nights, share them, and keep them alive long after the lights came on. Without them, a little part of the magic is missing.
Maybe one day we’ll see a shift back, when clubs can afford to bring photographers in again, or when they realise the value of capturing the atmosphere for more than just marketing. Until then, though, our Instagram will be quieter than it used to be, not because we’ve lost interest, but because the nights themselves aren’t being documented like they once were. And that’s something I think the whole scene should think about.
