I’m pretty proud of the heritage and history of my choosen home town, but we really lack rock musicians. This is why I was so excited when Gergő Nagy, a guitarist in Szentendre contacted me for a street fashion photoshoot.
Gergő needed a professional promotional photo series for his personal brand. He is also endorsed by Dorko a cool Hungarian street fashion label, so he also needed some shots featuring the DRK apparel. Combining my expertise in men’s fashion and the love for rock music, this job was perfect!
Shooting guitarist street fashion in Szentendre
I listened to his playing. He plays instrumental rock guitar music like Joe Satriani, Andy James, but I can hear some Tosin Abasi and Tony MacAlpine vibes in his playing. Don’t believe me that it’s awsome, look him up on his Facebook page or his Instagram and listen to his track on Youtube. He’ll have an album out soon that I’m eager to hear. Getting to know cool local artists like him is just one of the many rarely mentioned aspect of doing photography.
https://www.instagram.com/nagygergomusic/
https://www.facebook.com/nagygergoguitarist/
The location
When we planned the shoot, we talked a lot about the location. While I suggested that the ideal location is a grungy, urban, industrial environment, we both felt it had to be Szentendre. I was absolutely clueless how and where to do the shoot. Szentendre has a lot of different spots perfect for almost any kind of shoots, but for metal music, it is far from ideal. Also, Dorko is a brand that is modern and urban heavy. How can you show off modern stuff in a medival town? Especially a guitarist street fashion in Szentendre?
Then I thought about one of the most fundamental principles in photography: Contrast. The music and the clothing is dark and modern, while the town is light and classic. I could use this opposition to create contrast that will be the founding stone of a very cool and grim series. My shooting style is perfect to utilize this!
So the images were shot to be urban, hard, contrasty and heavy. Like his music or DRK clothing. The town was kind to us, and lent its beauty and uniqueness. Now I’m quite proud that I pulled off a shooting like this. I’m proud of this guitarist in Szentendre and I’m proud of my town as well.
The Gear and geeky stuff
Rain. That was one thing that I did not want to have during this shoot, as I bought my 600W mobile studio light. Of course, we were like five minutes into the shoot, when it started to rain. It did not pour heavily, but it was just enough for the light to stop working. What could we do? We went back to the parking lot and put the whole lighting into the trunk and started to shoot with natural light.
Fortunately it was mostly overcast, a perfect time for the look we were going for. At the very end of the shoot we got some blue skyes as well. What a lot of photographers fail to recognise is that even if the cloud coverage is full and the location is dark, no mattter how diffused a light is, it still have a direction. Just put up your palm, and move around and you’ll see where the light is coming from. If you need more contrast, it is easy to boost it in post.
I shot all the pictures with my Sony A7III camera, the Sony 85mm f1.8 and Sony 16-35mm f4 Zeiss lenses. While I’m going to get a 50mm pretty soon for my studio work, I still feel these two lenses let me create whatever I want out in the open.
My favourite images
If you need something like this series: