That would be the picture of Sonam and Anand right after they got married. I remember clicking it and since this had to be circulated immediately, I rushed to edit it. In those three minutes, I must have gone through with at least 150 clicks. So which one do I choose was the big question. I chose the picture of Anand looking at Sonam and saying something and she giggling like a little girl. It was so adorable… they have a naivete to their chemistry and a purity in their expressions in that picture, that really stood out. That, for me, was the image of the wedding.
Wedding photography is serious business. It doesn’t mean a series of shots of the rituals and some group family photos, but candid moments of the stars of the evening and the people they care for celebrating their special day. Celebrity wedding photographer Anand Rathi’s big moment was clicking the Sonam Kapoor and Anand Ahuja wedding last month. t2 chatted with Rathi, who runs Reels & Frames in Mumbai, about what went into capturing the Bollywood wedding of the year on camera.
How did the Kapoors zoom in on you to photograph Sonam’s wedding?
We’ve built a respectable client base over the years and they had heard about our work from someone who had hired us. Initially, there were a lot of meetings with Sunitaji and Rhea (Sonam’s mother and sister) where we were trying to understand how the wedding would shape up and their expectations from us.
In the pre-production phase, we recceed the venue with the event planner and chalked out the plan. The wedding itself was a breeze because everyone came in fully prepared. On the morning after the reception, I exited the venue around 4.30am while the rest of my team left at 6.30am. We couldn’t sleep for the next two days… the excitement of it was so much. It was the kind of wedding that makes you so happy that you have a hangover for days after.
Was there a specific brief?
Yes. Sonam is photographed so much all over the world, so they wanted to know how we could do it differently. Beauty shots are something that we, as wedding photographers, specialise in: fresh, aesthetically-pleasing, typically executed with one source of light and not highly edited. And that’s what we focused on.
The good thing was that not only the Kapoor family, but even the couple — Sonam and Anand — let us be in our creative space. They never told us, ‘Take a photo like that’ or ‘Take this from this angle’. This was possibly the only wedding where none of our cameraman were told, ‘Make me look thin!’ (Laughs)
What were the challenges of photographing a wedding with so many celebrity guests?
The pressure of doing justice to the wedding through our photos was immense. One would expect a big fat Indian wedding like this to be a show. This wasn’t. When a big wedding becomes as simple as this one was, then how do you up your game photography-wise? So we decided on getting the emotions right first, the beautifications could come later.
The second challenge was to try and capture the moments while being invisible. We had a full wardrobe done, as per the themes of the ceremonies, for our team. So the mehndi was white-on-white, the Anand Karaj (Sikh marriage ceremony) was traditional and the cocktails was formal. We were dressed like any other guest so that we could blend into the crowd, walk into personal spaces and quickly slide out.
The third challenge was specific to the wedding ceremony and that was how to be super silent. At the wedding, there was pin-drop silence, apart from the granthis who were chanting hymns. In between all that, how do you ensure that you communicate with your team seamlessly and your camera clicks are not making a noise? We were shooting with the latest Sony cameras that allowed us to be completely silent and were coordinating on our walkies.
A wedding photographer should:
• Have an eye for emotions and frames
• Allow warmth to seep into your lens. After all, this is the biggest moment in the lives of the bride and groom.
• Respect privacy and do what makes them comfortable. Don’t insist on a frame or a pose if the bride and groom don’t want to do it.
• Be prepared to work long hours and in a rush because weddings can be crazy.
BIZ BASICS
You are self-taught. What made you want to take up this profession?
I was stuck in a really shitty finance job! (Laughs) Honestly, I don’t know what specifically powered me, but I was a hobby photographer for two-three years before I jumped into it full-time. It’s been five years since that leap of faith, but I feel I have barely scratched the surface. We are all learning through YouTube and various blogs. We have engineers as well as those who worked as chauffeurs in their previous jobs… and everyone discovered their love for wedding photography and came together.
Do you still have to break the mental block of, ‘Why should we pay so much to get our wedding photographed when we can click the pictures ourselves?’
Well, that’s something that still haunts us sometimes, but the progression has been fantastic. A few years ago, I had to explain to people what ‘candid’ meant and now clients come to us asking for candid pictures or ‘candid posing’ ones where we put them in a certain pose and then allow them to be. The education level of clients has gone up, and that allows us to not only push the barrier but also take this up as a full-time job. Now we only shoot weddings, we don’t feel the need to shoot anything else.
How do you navigate through the chaos of a celebrity wedding?
You know a wedding is going right when you see people smiling without making an effort. That is the litmus test for a happy wedding, be it a big one or a small one. At times, people forget that they are there to participate in a celebration… they are so worried and it shows on the face.
At Sonam and Anand’s wedding, there was none of the chaos you would associate with a big wedding. Everyone was happy, smiling, chilling. Sonam was ready with her make-up an hour and 15 minutes before she was supposed to enter the mandap. How often do you see that, especially from someone of that stature? Once she got ready, she was clicking selfies, chilling with her friends.
Have you had horror stories at weddings?
Given the number of weddings we’ve shot over the years, we’ve dealt with some unfortunate situations. We’ve faced thunder and massive rain in the middle of a sangeet… the bride and the groom had to dance in the rain. We’ve dealt with extreme temperatures we hadn’t planned for, missing baaraats.... But I look at every horror incident as a memory of a wedding. Like someone saying years later, ‘It started raining, but the bride and groom continued with their dance. How awesome was that!’ There is happiness even in the chaos… that’s how I look at weddings.
What’s the future of the wedding photography business in India?
The industry is too split up in India, geographically, for me to comment on it. I picked up my photography in the US six-seven years ago and it’s only now that the industry has somewhat come up to a level. The wedding photography masters in the world out there are creating some magic that we haven’t discovered yet. Of course, it’s different shooting a 100-people wedding as opposed to the 1,000-people weddings we have here. But the business is definitely booming in India. It will change the way we look at wedding photographs. The photos we click now are for the next generation. One day, Sonam and Anand’s kids will discover these images and I really hope they say, ‘Mom and dad, you look really happy and these pictures are so good’. We are working towards that.
