An ultimate reward

The ultimate purpose of a good wedding photo book is to recall the emotions of a wedding like it has happened just now!

I had handled an emotional wedding recently. It was wonderful to shoot a Vietnam bride and a south Indian bridegroom uniting in marriage. The couple were from different countries and cultural backgrounds. What I found common in them were the emotions and values of human relationships.

During the reception, I was asked to screen few of the childhood images of the couple, along with glimpses of the wedding that happened a few days ago. The brief slide show with mild music contained few of the wedding pictures with the emotions neatly captured. As the pictures rolled on the screen, it brought back to them memories of their wedding.

The couple and their relatives became emotional with tears. At the end of the slide show, the couple couldn’t control their emotions. With the tears in their eyes, they called me onto the stage, congratulated and hugged me and said that the pictures were wonderful. I become emotional too; as I thanked them for the given opportunity.

It was a great moment in my life and wedding photography career. It was a priceless appreciation and an ultimate reward for my work. I shared this moment immediately with my associate photographers present over there.

What else can make my life as a wedding photographer more meaningful than moments like these? I am proud of being a photographer, who can make remarkable difference to people through my pictures. These moments really prove the power of the great art – ‘Photography’. Let our cameras make pictures that touch the heart of people, because it is the ultimate reward a photographer must aim at.

Are they not expressive enough?

Most of us are generally very conscious in front of a camera. We underplay our expressions, try to be modest and look very artificial while facing a camera! This is especially true with most of they Indian brides, who are otherwise so expressive and lively as ‘girls’ in real life. As ‘brides’, they are very conscious about themselves – keeping their body and look very stiff and unnatural! This becomes even bad, when a photographer calls their attention or just aims his/her camera in front of them.

But in one of my very recent wedding assignments, I found this young bride coming out with millions of expressions every second all through the events! I could observe her fantastic moods through her changing body language, responsive eyes and expressions. Her eyes, the smile, her hands, her hair and everything that changed quickly were communicating her joy and involvement in the wedding. She was natural and unmindful about our cameras which focused on her.S

When you identify such a lively subjects, you end up with lots of lovely pictures. It was really a feast for all our cameras. We caught her in various moods and expressions and the wedding book was designed on the theme of the ‘Bride’s Expressions’.

In the general scene of south Indian weddings, the brides are mostly stiff, timid and concerned about everything in and around them. Most of them react so artificially in all situations. This restricted pattern of behavior unfortunately brings out the not so real ‘bride of the girl’.

Why can’t our brides come out of the conventional timid expressions to make photography true to life!