If you dig through the pile of old photo albums at home (check the hardest-to-reach cupboards, the ones no one ever opens) and flip through your parents wedding pictures, you’ll notice a few things instantly. The weddings back then were simpler, the cameras bulkier, the grain higher. But apart from that, every image just seems more considered, and not just because they were mindful of the film reel. Someone was always looking directly into the lens, very aware that this moment was being documented.
Cut to now, and Indian wedding photography looks like an entirely different genre. “Earlier, it was a very couple-centric approach. You’d go and shoot what was happening in front of your eyes,” says Siddharth Sharma, founder of House on the Clouds, which celebrates ten years this year. “Now, storytelling is much more layered.”
Photographed by House on the Clouds
Layered is one way to put it. Today’s wedding photography doesn’t just begin and end with the couple; it also takes every detail around them into account. Like the embroidery on the dupatta, (selected after months of back and forth with the designer) or the floral arrangements (courtesy of three Pinterest boards). “Even the smallest details like the decor, the glasses and the crockery become part of the story,” Sharma explains. “These things were usually ignored earlier, but now they tell your story in a very different way.”
Of course, Indian weddings still come with their non-negotiable headline acts. The varmala exchange. The drop of the curtain. The kiss after exchanging vows. These are big, sweeping moments that everyone waits for. “There are five or six ‘hero moments’ that define the wedding,” he says. “And earlier, those were the only moments that were really focused on.” But what about everything in between? There are the minutes before the bride walks in, the groom waiting with bated breath. There’s the slight lull when guests are mingling with nothing in particular to do, their children hiding underneath tables. And then the aftermath, when the music has faded, but the conversations haven’t ended. “That candid, in-between space—that’s what’s changed,” Sharma adds.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: vogue.in
