When I’m tasked with shooting a cover for a magazine I’m a little more nervous than most other music related work and there’s a few reasons for this…. Firstly, a magazine cover sells the mag, so the image on it needs to be nothing less than perfect. I need to understand, deliver and portray the artist and story in the very best light and I usually need to do all this to a pretty tight deadline. Secondly, cover shots are remembered and treasured over time, whether that be by the magazine themselves, the artist in the image, their Mum or their faithful fans – people take notice!
So, when the recent call came in that I was to shoot the, as DJ Mag puts it, legendary hit maker Nile Rogers, my mind went into overdrive! When you photograph a hugely successful musician such as Nile it’s important to grasp his personality, his style and his story for all to see without it coming across as cheesy in anyway whatsoever. The shots I took during this shot, in my opinion, do this perfectly.
You can see his passion for the music, you can see his individuality, his charm, his intelligence and thanks partly to his rather battered guitar – his history!
With the backdrop of Abbey Road Studios, I was pretty flipping chuffed with how these turned out.
