diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index 4fa0885..56e8390 100755
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -33,6 +33,7 @@ deps = [
     'PySocks>=1.6.8',
     'cryptography>=2.3',
     'idna>=2.5',
+    'PyYAML>=5.1',
 ]
 try:
     import concurrent.futures
diff --git a/warcprox/main.py b/warcprox/main.py
index 7fe5011..0ef5c58 100644
--- a/warcprox/main.py
+++ b/warcprox/main.py
@@ -30,6 +30,7 @@ except ImportError:
     import Queue as queue
 
 import logging
+import logging.config
 import sys
 import hashlib
 import argparse
@@ -39,6 +40,7 @@ import traceback
 import signal
 import threading
 import certauth.certauth
+import yaml
 import warcprox
 import doublethink
 import cryptography.hazmat.backends.openssl
@@ -239,6 +241,9 @@ def _build_arg_parser(prog='warcprox', show_hidden=False):
     arg_parser.add_argument(
             '--trace', dest='trace', action='store_true',
             help='very verbose logging')
+    arg_parser.add_argument(
+            '--logging-conf-file', dest='logging_conf_file', default=None,
+            help=('reads logging configuration from a YAML file'))
     arg_parser.add_argument(
             '--version', action='version',
             version="warcprox {}".format(warcprox.__version__))
@@ -302,6 +307,11 @@ def main(argv=None):
                 '%(asctime)s %(process)d %(levelname)s %(threadName)s '
                 '%(name)s.%(funcName)s(%(filename)s:%(lineno)d) %(message)s'))
 
+    if args.logging_conf_file:
+        with open(args.logging_conf_file, 'r') as fd:
+            conf = yaml.safe_load(fd)
+            logging.config.dictConfig(conf)
+
     # see https://github.com/pyca/cryptography/issues/2911
     cryptography.hazmat.backends.openssl.backend.activate_builtin_random()