A candid shot of a bride getting ready before her wedding. Pictures by Sanjib Mukherjee

Bhubaneswar, Nov. 22: Everybody wants their wedding to be picture perfect and a good wedding photographer knows how to capture those most precious moments.

Giving a glimpse of what magic fingers of a wedding shutterbug can do is a photography exhibition titled Heartbeats. The five-day exhibition, organised by a group of freelance photographers, is on at the regional centre of Lalit Kala Akademi.

Four photographers — Sankar Kanhar, Soumyaranjan Biswal, Kumar Chiranjivee and Pratik Das — have put their snaps on display. Most of the photographs are beautifully captured moments of the bride-to-be in various moods.

A series of five snaps by Kanhar brilliantly encapsulates the moment of a girl who is meticulously getting ready for her big day. The rituals such as ‘mehndi ceremony” and stealing shoes of the groom have also been clicked. The father-daughter relationship is also explored.

Moments such as the clasped hand of the groom or him affectionately patting the shoulder of the bride spoke more than a thousand words. Amidst the hullabaloo, the man and wife also get time to kid with each other.

While many pictures are natural emotions, there are a few posed ones inspired from Bollywood imagery like the silhouette of a the man lifting his wife in his arms and the wife floating her “chunni” in the breeze or a man taking his wife for a horse ride.

“Capturing those natural moments needs a lot of precision, even for posed ones, there has to be conducive environment that the shutterbug creates. For a candid snap, the subject must feel comfortable and confident,” said Kanhar.

The exhibition has lots of colourful closed-angle clicks.

Surprising, the expansive collection focuses merely on Hindu weddings. Many felt Muslim, Sikh and Christian weddings are equally colourful and having them on display would have added to the diversity of the collection.

“Such an exhibition can cheer anyone up,” said Ankita Mishra, a visitor.