About
I photograph people where they already are.
I’m Rohit Shrestha, a portrait and editorial photographer based in Kathmandu, Nepal. I started in 2015 assisting on magazine shoots around Durbar Square, mostly carrying other people’s bags, and I have been making my own pictures full time since 2018.
The work divides roughly in four. Commissioned portraits — families, founders, musicians, anyone who needs one good picture of themselves. Editorial assignments for magazines and hospitality brands, usually people photographed at their trade. Weddings, photographed the way they happen rather than the way they are staged. And personal work: the valley in monsoon, festival crowds, the ridge at dusk. That last category pays nothing and is the reason I do the rest.
I work in English and Nepali. My studio is in Jhamsikhel, Lalitpur, but most sittings happen at home, at work, or somewhere that means something to the person in front of the camera.
How I work
Unhurried
A portrait session runs two to three hours. Most of the pictures I keep come from the second hour, once the camera has stopped being the point.
Available light
I shoot in the light you actually live in — a window, a courtyard, a doorway at five o'clock. Strobes only when a commission genuinely needs them.
Nothing published without you
You see a full edit before anything goes anywhere. Family and private sittings stay off this site and off social media unless you tell me otherwise.
Commissioned by
- A national daily
- A Kathmandu hospitality group
- Two heritage-textile labels
- A travel quarterly
- An independent record label