Rohan Shrestha on his shoot with Leo Messi: After the shoot he came back and hugged me; I wept

Bollywood photographer Rohan Shrestha released his photo series with football player Lionel Messi, after witnessing Argentina’s win at the FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar. Interestingly, Shrestha is a massive Messi fan, and has been a follower of his work right when the footballer made his debut at 17 in 2004.

“This is beyond my dreams, it was my fantasy,” says the 37-year-old. The first time when Shrestha’s friend pitched him for the shoot, the photographer “couldn’t even take it seriously initially”. It took almost a month and a half for Shrestha to finally get to shoot Messi after having that conversation first. “It was a month of sleepless nights. You are always worrying before it because you always think about the worst-case scenario,” he mentions.

Shrestha is the first Indian photographer to shoot Messi, who is a current sensation all across the globe. Shrestha reveals the entire process of the shoot was so well planned that he even did a mock shoot with a model just a day before the big shoot with Messi.

“Before he even entered, I was having serious amounts of anxiety, I had a double Espresso, which did not help at all, in fact, it made it worse,” he quips, further adding, “When he came he wasn’t like he was a star. It was just a guy, he was just so nonchalant about these things. But when he sat for my first shot, I cannot tell you how my hand was shaking. I don’t usually shoot with a tripod, but I put the camera on a tripod.”

Shrestha couldn’t speak to Messi directly, as the Argentinian footballer doesn’t speak English, however, the two shared a beautiful moment, which led to the Bandra lad shedding tears. “I was having a lot of chats with him through his translator. But my communication with him was primarily to do with the direction of the shots. And at the end of the shoot, I just happened to tell him that I am a massive fan. I told him that I have watched him in the stadium since 2006 and I started sprouting of things that I knew about Messi’s entire career and this guy was like, “Oh my God’. He was like, ‘We really need to get you a picture with him’. I didn’t know how to ask because I’m very introverted. That happened but I think that the translator happened to tell Messi the entire story that I told him. At the end of the shoot and I’m not gonna lie, I finished the shoot, he shook my hand and he walked away, he came back and he hugged me. That was my moment, that was my life, that was my everything, that moment was good for me. He didn’t need to do that. Then I went outside onto the lawns and I wept. I was like what have I done to deserve this? These are moments that are not in your control. If anyone ever asked me in 2009, ‘Who would like to shoot?’ It was always Messi,” he narrates.