A Harpenden photographer is over the moon after one of his images was chosen for an album cover by his favourite band.

Steve Collins, who is chair of Harpenden Photographic Society, has been a huge fan of Matt Johnson's iconic band The The ever since they released the classic Soul Mining album in 1983.

But he now has an additional reason to be excited by their forthcoming release after an image he took during their recent tour was personally chosen by Matt to become the cover for the project.

Steve's image will now feature on a new multi-format live album, The Comeback Special, with the 24-song live set capturing the band’s performance on June 5 2018 at the Royal Albert Hall.

Steve said: “Never in my wildest dreams could I ever have imagined that a photograph of mine would be used as an album cover for my all-time favourite band! It feels so unreal, it hasn’t quite sunk in yet.”

Herts Advertiser: Steve Collins with his original photo of Matt Johnson from The The.Steve Collins with his original photo of Matt Johnson from The The. (Image: Steve Collins)

The collaboration came about after The The reformed in 2018 for a series of gigs topped by a show at the Royal Albert Hall in London, and Matt spotted some of Steve's photos from the tour on his Instagram account.

“Matt saw and loved some of my images of the tour on my Instagram, and via his people, reached out to me.

"We met up back in summer 2018, where I showed him all my images, and he mentioned that he’d be interested in using some for a future Royal Albert Hall live concert release, which was in the early planning stages.

"It all went quiet for a while, and then the pandemic happened. Then, out of the blue, a few months ago, an email came through saying that Matt would love to use one of my images for the front cover. This was such exciting news! We reached an agreement, and I subsequently worked closely with the designers on the project on re-touching and delivering the image to meet Matt’s vision for the album packaging.”