Street Photography Meets Tradition: How to Shoot an Indian Wedding Like a Pro
An Indian wedding is a grand affair, pompous, ritualistic, and full of jubilation. Thousands of years of traditions, along with family ties and joyous festivals, all tied in a pack to create this atmosphere what photographers dreamt of shooting, indeed.
But then, an Indian wedding is quite another challenge and opportunity when photographers look at combining the art of street photography with events as grand. That again can bring an altogether new look to wedding photography, adding the much-required depth, rawness, and authenticity to pictures.
In this article, we take a look at how street photography meets tradition and how you can shoot Indian weddings like a pro. We will literally break down what street photography is, its key characteristics, and how those apply to a traditional wedding setting. Further, we will go into the techniques, tips, and creative ideas that help photographers master this fusion style.
Understanding Street Photography
First, before getting into the depth of how to shoot Indian weddings in the style of street photography, one needs to understand what street photography is.
The core of street photography involves candid shots of life in public, a slice of life that’s usually filled with authenticity and raw emotion. It is all about making visual stories that strike a chord in the viewer by depicting real moments and not staged or still ones. Street photography must show the stamp of an unfiltered documentary style, which normally comes across as unplanned and spontaneous.
A good street photographer is observant, able to act quick, ready for that fleeting moment. It’s about slipping into the woodwork and blending with the crowd in order to get people acting naturally amidst whatever environment they are part of. It is also about finding that sense within a scene, be it a passing thought across the face of a pedestrian or the energy of a street market in a heaving city.
The Soul of Indian Weddings
Indian weddings are among the most verbose and terminal marriages in the world. This truly emanates from the core of Indian culture and its religiosity. Usually celebrated for days together, every Indian wedding covers a combination that varies with regional, religious, and community backgrounds, and finally reaches home in various customs and rituals.
Key Moments That You Will Relish at Indian Weddings:
Mehendi Ceremony:
This is the pre-wedding event where mehendi drawings are drawn onto the bride’s hands and feet. It really is quite a noisy, boisterous private function with song, dance, and loads of laughter.
Sangeet:
Among one of those traditional wedding functions filled with all charm and grace is the ‘sangeet’, where relatives or friends of both groom and bride sides come, sing, dance with traditional wedding songs at times coming out in modern tunes.
Wedding Day:
This is the stage when all diversified rituals and customs are given their final touches. Many a time, it involves the religious ceremony, exchanging vows, followed by feasting and celebration.
Reception:
It is customarily after the wedding ceremony, the event is done in a grand manner where all the guests give their blessings to the newly wedded couples along with their families. It consists most of the time of speeches, music, dancing, and dining in a jolly way.
Indian weddings are a riot of color in the form of clothes, jewelry, and decoration. With symbolic rituals/events like exchanging garlands, applying vermilion on the bride’s forehead, and sacred threads being tied, it becomes an ideal subject for street photography—a blend of culture, emotion, and tradition.
How Street Photography Can Improve Wedding Photography
While most wedding photography would involve posed portraits and staged settings, street photography brings in an element of surprise and spontaneity. It allows photographers to capture the energy and essence of the wedding as it unfolds with naturalness. Here are a few ways street photography can elevate your wedding photography:
Candid Moments:
Well, that is what street photography is all about, and for that matter of fact, what better avenue than an Indian wedding, when raw emotions are running high—from the bride’s nervous excitement down to the heartfelt vows by the groom? Street photography speaks of natural unrehearsed moments that at times say it all more than a poser can say. Marriage in India, with its high voltage of culture and emotion, never fails to have its magic.
The beauty of this form of street photography is that even if the events cannot be captured by the photographer, at least the underlying emotions can be captured: the tear-eyed mother watching her daughter be married or even a mischievous cousin who manages to sneak away with a piece from the wedding feasts adds such layers of depth and authenticity to the story.
Color and Chaos:
Indian weddings are ebullient if anything. With Street, one can let the chaos and vibrancy of the event, not try to put a lid on or harness it. The resultant play of vivid colors, motion along with minute detail can lend a visual appeal that is hard to match. The human factor is the important element of street photography, and that is what is most important in wedding photography—from the elderly couple holding hands to the bride’s friends sharing a moment of laughter, to a father adjusting his daughter’s veil, the story is all about the human touch.
Unconventional Angles and Perspectives:
The photographers of the street find pictures from unusual vantage points to give a unique perspective. This can mean taking photographs from the side during the ceremony, through mirrored reflections, or detailed parts of something, such as the bride’s shoes or hands while there is an ongoing activity around her.
Some Practical Trails for Capturing Indian Weddings in Street Photography Style
Having discussed the essence of street photography and how it could help raise the bar of wedding photography, let’s come to some practical tips that will ensure you capture yet another Indian wedding like a pro.
1. Blend In with the Crowd
Perhaps, the reason behind this is that the street photographers can feel good with the crowd. It is due to this rich ability that things work so effectively during wedding photography. You have to be most discreetly among the people so that you can click the real moments without making your subject conscious of the camera for clicking candid shots.
A click of interaction between the guests, with more than a family, bride, and groom, moving at the back within the venue to place themselves just right.
2. Pay Attention to Details
Capture the big scenes—the wide shots of a wedding—but not at the expense of the little pieces that tell the story. Focus on the bride’s jewelry, adjusting of the sherwani of the groom, or hands of the elderly holding each other. These close-up shots add a personal touch to the overall narrative.
3. True-to-life Emotions
A wedding in India is replete with those moments when one has tears of joy, uncontrollable belly laughs, or a gleam of excitement in their eyes, whether of the bride/groom or the invitees, and a street photographer knows precisely where to reach to capture in photographs that passing expression marking the most intimate moments.
4. Natural Light
Most street photographers shoot in natural light to keep the air of reality in raw, rugged images. The wedding light in India can be dramatized so well, be it the evening ceremony or the events outdoors. Utilize the sources of light, such as the coziness of the setting sun, the softness of chandeliers, or flickering flames of diya or oil lamps, to frame beautiful and evocative frames.
5. Capture the Ambiance
Street photography is not about that one moment; it’s an atmosphere. Where is life always at every nook and corner? The whole feel and flavor of an Indian wedding—with its elaborate decoration, buzzing atmosphere, and endless guest lists—keep you on your toes to capture this chaos: maybe in chaos at wedding preparations, or the fanfare at baaraat, or the dances that happen at receptions.
6. Experiment with Composition and Framing:
A street photographer often plays with composition, framing, and perspectives to come up with striking images. Be creative with the environment in weddings by framing your subjects through doors and windows or floral decorations; playing reflections in mirrors or water. This will give extra edge to your photos and a unique visual narrative.
7. Capture Interaction Among People
What could even be the best point of doing street photography—maybe capturing interactions between people: the dynamism and energy of it. A wedding itself is continuously interactive, wound around people: congratulatory relatives, joking with friends sharing, and blessings from elders being prepared to shoot such candids showing the bonding between individuals.
8. Celebrate Movement
There is motion everywhere at any Indian wedding: while people dance at sangeet, during the exchanging of garlands, and the bride and groom go around the fire. Street photography, in general, is a style of photography that loves movement; hence, getting it for a wedding shoot would make these pictures full of life and much more emotive. This can include slow shutter speeds for a streaky show of motion blur or freezing it at fast shutter speeds in an attempt to bring out this energetic dynamism.
9. Work with the Environment
Many a time, street photographers work with an environment to support telling their story. In a wedding, for example, that would include surrounding the decorated stage, vibrant textiles, or dramatic lighting to help add to your compositions. Where wide shots are necessary and architecture or the natural features are included, the photographer should shoot without fear of doing so.
10. Anticipate Moments
Wedding photographers are, in many ways, very similar to street photographers, since they have got to be ready to shoot quite literally on a second’s notice, anticipating those moments for short-lived emotions and actions. Whether it is the bride’s father, wiping away his tears, or the very nervous and apprehensive smile of the groom, being prepared and ready for that perfect capture of the moment is what this style is all about.
Conclusion
Indian weddings are an incredulous blend of culture, tradition, and emotion all put together. This new dimension to wedding photography implies candid capturing of unfiltered emotions, colors, and raw celebration that emphasize, in reality, not just the beauty of a wedding, but in unimaginable ways. In the end, it is a combination of technical skill and intuitive feel for human emotion that yields great results at weddings. The genre holds elements from street photography, drawing on rather classic ways of approaching wedding photography. Merge with the backgrounds, keen on intimate detail, while waiting for magic moments, capture the energy, a million ways—one of how the photographer can show that this too is one particular story worth being told is through an Indian wedding so intricately and gorgeously complex. Whether it is a seasoned photographer or an amateur who has a yen to try this out for the very first time, street photography of an Indian Wedding offers you a whole new level of dynamism. Take out your camera, involve yourself in the rejoicing, and let the stories come naturally—thru the viewfinder.