Challenges of Indian Wedding Photography

Yes, unlike the western weddings, the weddings in India are very elaborate, with a lot of events and ceremonies. Most of the ceremonies are difficult to photograph and become a grand challenge to the photographer. Some times there may not be enough space to move around and people may not co-operate with the photographer. The events many times may not be happening as per the plan or time schedule. Photographers are not informed about the delay or change in the sequence of the happenings and they need to be always prepared for the make shift arrangement at any point of time. It means that, you are always expected to deliver some thing superlative even when your creativity is at stake.

When I was covering an important event in a most popular and famous church in Chennai a few days ago, the chief priest instructed our team not to move from a particular place. The place specified unfortunately was not a vantage point for the event to be covered. I requested him that we might be allowed to move around a limited area without disturbing the proceedings of the mass. But he bluntly argued saying that, “Our ceremonies and functions are more important than your photography”. Of course he was right, but then why we were there? Maybe he failed to understand that we were there to aesthetically document the whole proceeding…!

Sometimes the wedding couples do not give us the bare minimum time for spot wedding portraits though they afford to wait for hours to do the make-up and styling before they get ready. When they don’t even want to stand in front of a camera for a couple of minutes to do a neat wedding portrait, then what is the point of spending so much of time to get ready?. Remember a good wedding portrait at the location immediately after the wedding is very important as it is almost impossible to do it again afterwards.

Many of us forget that the wedding pictures bring back the real memory of our wedding day, and a wedding photographer is an important person in a wedding, who has to be given enough time and facilities to make your wedding pictures look truly great!

Despite the constrains in Indian wedding photography scenario, I always try to explain my clients about the challenges of wedding photography and make them understand the importance of 'photography' in weddings. Nowadays, I am able to achieve the difference that I had always wanted. They respect my photography because they believe that our team is capable of projecting their wedding in terms of International style and standards.

- KL.Raja