Styles / Vernacular & studio
Indian candid and pre-wedding photography
- Key: the sun, from behind, to the camera’s left, low, hard.
- Reflector: a white card or reflector, about 55° to the camera’s right, soft.
- Fill: a flash on the camera, from the camera, hard.
- Lamp in the scene: a lamp, sign or screen, from the camera’s left, at the side, hard.
Low sun: shoot near sunrise or sunset. Leave the lamps’ own colour in: do not correct sodium orange, tungsten amber or fluorescent green.
Schematic, not to scale: worked out from the style’s choices. No set-up of this style has been rendered yet.
Bride smiling among relatives during the wedding ceremony
Shashank Mhasawade, wedding photograph, 24 August 2013. CC BY 2.0, via Flickr and Wikimedia Commons. Source: Bride smiling among relatives during the wedding ceremony at Flickr, via Wikimedia Commons
Groom and bride in wedding dress at twilight, from a couple shoot
Vijay kumar76 (Vijay Shashwat Studio), wedding couple photograph, 2024. CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Source: Groom and bride in wedding dress at twilight, from a couple shoot at Wikimedia Commons
Wedding photography of urban India since the late 2000s, in two registers. Candid: photographers who study the rituals and melt into the crowd pick out glances, tears, laughter, hennaed hands and jewellery wide open, by stage lamps and fairy lights, mostly in dense warm reds and golds, sometimes in a paler fine-art grade; big studios now also stage such moments to look spontaneous. Pre-wedding: the same studios direct the couple in styled outfits at forts, lakes, monuments or built sets, with lights, drones and film-like grades.
How the look is made
- In the candid ideal, learn the rituals and their order beforehand, then stay out of them: never ask anyone to smile, stand or look at the camera, and be in place before the garland, the thread, the rice or the tears.
- Work from the edge of the crowd with a 70–200 mm zoom or a fast shorter lens near wide open, using relatives' shoulders, flowers and drapes as soft foreground layers, and crop tight on faces, glances, hennaed hands and jewellery.
- Light the ceremonies with what they already have (stage lamps, fairy lights, lamps and fire, the low sun) and raise the ISO rather than fire a direct flash.
- Keep the reds, golds, magentas and turmeric yellows dense and warm in the edit, or, for a pastel wedding, pale and soft throughout, and give the whole wedding one consistent grade.
- For the pre-wedding shoot, direct instead: styled outfits at a fort, lake, palace, monument or built set, golden hour or dusk, a reflector or a lighting crew, moving fabric, a drone overhead and a scene staged like a song from a film.
- Edit the days into a story, from preparations through the rituals to the reception, with the couple portraits and group pictures in their place, for a designed album and for the couple's feed.
Shoot sheet for your kit
Fill in your camera, lenses and lights, and the sheet says which light plays each part, what to work around and where to start on your camera. Without a kit it starts on a full-frame camera.
Light
Key: the sun, from behind, to the camera’s left, low, hard.
Reflector: a white card or reflector, about 55° to the camera’s right, soft.
Fill: a flash on the camera, from the camera, hard.
Lamp in the scene: a lamp, sign or screen, from the camera’s left, at the side, hard.
- Low sun: shoot near sunrise or sunset.
- Leave the lamps’ own colour in: do not correct sodium orange, tungsten amber or fluorescent green.
- Shadow edges
- Shadows that fade gradually from light to dark, cast by a large or diffused light: a window, a softbox, a cloudy sky.
- Shadow depth
- Shadows kept light and full of detail by a reflector, a fill light, bounce or bright surroundings (a low lighting ratio, up to about 3:1: the shadow side at most a stop and a half darker).
- Highlights
- Small, bright glints where the light reflects off wet, oily or polished surfaces: glistening food, dewy skin, the sparkle of jewellery or chrome.
How the style is lit
- Available light at evening and night ceremonies (stage and decor lamps, fairy lights, oil lamps and fire), often beside continuous lights in umbrellas set up by the photo or video crew, with the ISO raised and no direct flash.
- Low sun or blue hour behind or beside the couple on location, with a reflector or fill held by an assistant.
- Flash and lights set up by a crew for couple portraits at dusk and on built pre-wedding sets, lighting the couple against a darkening sky or a decorated set.
This plan is worked out from the style’s choices, so it is drawn as a schematic. One way to get the light, not a record of how any photograph was lit.
Lens and settings
Start at
On a full-frame camera: the same depth of field and exposure as the style’s own numbers, in the same light. Then meter and adjust.
- Then
- 24–200 mm · f/1.8–f/4 · 1/250–1/60 s · ISO 400–3200 on full frame, documented. Redhu works with an X100 (35 mm eq.) and 24–70, 14–24 and 70–200 mm f/2.8 zooms; Mhasawade's evening ceremony EXIF runs 45–200 mm at f/2.8–4, ISO 400–3200, 1/160–1/200 s; 85 mm f/1.8 for couples. Daylight pre-wedding shoots drop to ISO 100–200.
- White balance
- Auto or daylight white balance on raw; stage lamps, fairy lights, oil lamps and fire are left warm and pushed towards gold in the edit, not neutralised (inferred).
- Focal length
- A long lens stacks distant planes close together.
- Focus
- One plane sharp, the rest melting into blur and bokeh.
- Angle
- The camera at the height of a standing person or of the subject.
- Distance
- Within arm’s reach: faces, hands and details fill the frame.
- Crop & fill
- The edges cut into the subject: heads, limbs or objects run out of frame. The subject shown small within its setting, which explains it.
- Depth
- Separate events in the foreground, middle ground and background.
- Instant
- Gesture and geometry peak together in one instant.
Direct
At the ceremonies nobody is directed: the bride, groom and families go through the rituals absorbed in each other, and the photographer waits for a sideways glance, a laugh or tears, or crops to hennaed hands. Couple portraits stand square and still; at pre-wedding shoots the pair walk hand in hand, touch foreheads or spin so the skirt flares.
- Head & gaze
- Eyes off the frame, past the camera or into the distance, as if lost in thought.
- Arms & hands
- Only hands in the frame, holding, pouring, cutting or offering, with no face.
- Expression
- Open-mouthed laughter, eyes creased: joy caught as it happens. Tears, grief, anger, fear or elation shown openly on the face and in the body.
- Several people
- People talking, playing, working or dancing together, absorbed in each other rather than the camera. People holding, hugging, kissing, leaning on or carrying one another.
- The moment
- People photographed as they are, unaware or unconcerned.
- With the sitter
- The subject performs for the camera and shapes the picture.
- The set-up
- A scene staged and directed like a film still or a painting.
Style the set
The wearers' own wedding clothes: silk saris, lehengas and sherwanis in reds and golds or pastels, with gold jewellery, garlands, henna and turbans, polished or full bridal make-up and set hair, among flowers and fairy lights; pre-wedding couples change outfits at chosen forts, lakes or built sets.
- Clothes
- The wearers’ own festive, religious or wedding clothes: saris and lehengas, boubous, robes, kimono.
- Hair & make-up
- Groomed hair and finished make-up that still look natural: even skin, defined eyes, neat brows.
- Set & props
- A real place picked for its look as the setting for a shoot, not the subjects’ own: a street, a field, a palace, a hotel room.
- Look of the styling
- Patterns, objects and textures piled together: pattern on pattern, flowers on brocade.
Finish
- Colour
- Strong, dense colours. An overall yellow, orange or red cast.
- Digital & other
- A modern digital camera: clean, detailed, neutral.
- Post-production
- Perfected skin and surfaces.
- Shown as
- Pictures made and shown as a set.
- Shown in
- Prints for an album, a card or a frame at home. Pictures made for a scrolling feed.
Stay away from direct on-camera flash, studio backdrop, deadpan, objective & scientific, stiff & held still and flat form.
Before you shoot it
These are pictures of real, private people at the most personal and often religious moments of their lives: brides, grooms, their parents, children and guests, during rites with sacred meaning such as the sacred fire, the tying of the thaali or mangalsutra and the application of sindoor or haldi. The style is practised by a living community of studios and by many named living photographers: describe its choices, never prompt with a photographer's or studio's name or copy a portfolio, and credit studios whose work is shown. Indian weddings are Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, Jain, Parsi and more, each with its own rites and dress. Do not flatten the many faiths' weddings into one generic bridal costume, and do not invent rituals. Retouch blemishes but do not lighten skin: whitening brides in the edit feeds colourism, a pressure many brides already meet from make-up artists and photographers. The look also sells costly display, in a country where weddings can absorb a large share of a family's wealth and a pre-wedding video can cost more than the honeymoon: do not present that spending as the norm. Pre-wedding stunts at lakes, in trees and on roads can go wrong (a groom staged in a lake fell in), and shoots at temples and monuments need permission and respect for worshippers.
Photographs that define it
From open collections, shown whole with their credits. Later photographs are linked, not shown, while they are in copyright.
Detail of a bride's hennaed arm with a gold armlet and bangles
Shashank Mhasawade, wedding photograph, 24 August 2013. CC BY 2.0, via Flickr and Wikimedia Commons. Source: Detail of a bride's hennaed arm with a gold armlet and bangles at Flickr, via Wikimedia Commons
With other styles
The opposite: Light and airy. Both sell wedding keepsakes shot wide open with the sun behind the couple, but light and airy overexposes everything into pale pastels in open daylight, while the Indian candid look mostly keeps reds and golds dense through night ceremonies and crowds of relatives and goes pale only for a pastel-themed wedding; choose one grade per wedding, and do not let a light-and-airy preset wash out brown skin.
The opposite: Indian painted photographs. The older Indian family portrait sat frontal and still and let paint heighten the jewellery; the candid photographer leaves the jewellery to a long lens and an unposed moment, so borrow the painted portrait's frontal, regalia-first framing only for the formal couple and family portraits in the album.
Pairs with Teal-and-orange cinematic look. Pre-wedding shoots borrow the cinematic grade, warm skin against a blue-hour sky; keep the red and gold of the bridal clothes from being pushed to orange.
Pairs with French humanist photography. Candid ritual coverage works like humanist street photography, waiting at the edge of a crowd for the gesture that tells the story; add a long lens and dense colour, and keep the humanists' tenderness for the relatives.
The opposite: Staged tableau photography. Staged tableau directs a scene so that it looks found and hangs alone on a gallery wall; the pre-wedding shoot stages romance openly, film-style, for the couple's album and feed, so make the staging obvious and joyful rather than uncanny.
Sources
- Outlook News Desk, 'Cheese? Don't Say It', Outlook: https://www.outlookindia.com/society/cheese-dont-say-it-news-283165 (Outlook issue of 10 December 2012, re-dated 5 February 2022 online and updated 2024; the print date is confirmed by Naina Redhu, 'Press : Outlook India Magazine', naina.co, 3 December 2012, https://naina.co/2012/12/press-outlook-india-magazine, which quotes the article's Knotty Tales passage, 'Naina Redhu, who runs her photo company Knotty Tales, knows how to do that well'; candid photographers who blend into the crowd, do not ask the couple to smile, stand or look anywhere and study ceremonies beforehand; candid photography has 'taken off in India'; Ritika Singh of Delhi, Diptish Prakrit with about three years of wedding work, Naina Redhu of Knotty Tales in Noida, Mayuresh Patil of Mumbai and Nidhin G. Poothully of Bangalore; old-world studio wedding photographers 'far from a dying breed'; fees from Rs 15,000 to several lakhs; trendy 'fine art' photographers; pre-wedding photos popular; customised albums; shared on Facebook)
- Vinay Aravind, 'Flash Back: Evolution Of Wedding Photography', Outlook, 25 March 2024: https://www.outlookindia.com/amp/story/culture-society/flash-back-evolution-of-wedding-photography (20th-century Indian weddings shot on 35 mm film with direct flash and stiff posed groups until the late 2000s; the author began in 2011, when a big city had 'perhaps a handful of new-age candid wedding photographers' using available light and 'virtually no direct flash'; 'Somewhere around 2012-13, after perhaps four or five years of being a niche domain', candid photography 'went supernova', with the industry 'formalised, and almost corporatised'; then destination weddings in the 2010s and celebrity weddings on social media, 'dramatic, staged photographs, painstakingly lit, and strongly influenced by the movies', big teams and drones; the 'Bollywood style that prevails', pictures 'very carefully staged to evoke spontaneity and intimacy', a 'facsimile of spontaneity'; the 'quieter documentary style' a casualty; he does not mention pre-wedding shoots)
- Amrita S., Boobalakrishnan N. and Vishnu Achutha Menon, 'Preserving the Moment: An In-depth Exploration of Wedding Photography Trends and Styles', Communication & Journalism Research 13 (1), January–June 2024, pp. 57–80, DOI 10.5281/zenodo.12533401: https://cjrjournal.in/Uploads/Files/CJR_J24_3_Amrita.pdf (interviews with 50 South Indian Hindu couples: a preference for candid over posed pictures, documentary-style photographers, traditional photographers who guide their subjects through a predetermined list of shots and group shots, drone photography adding a 'cinematic dimension', pre- and post-wedding shoots at personal locations, fairy-lit evening receptions, albums from flush-mount and coffee-table books to digital albums with group pictures in collages; a couple whose wedding 'theme was in pastels', so 'the same approach was followed for retouching and design'; citing Bhandari (2017) that roughly one-fifth of a person's lifetime wealth goes on weddings)
- Bloomberg, 'India falls hard for extravagant and expensive pre-wedding videos', Gulf News, 18 March 2023: https://www.gulfnews.com/world/asia/india/watch-india-falls-hard-for-extravagant-and-expensive-pre-wedding-videos-1.94534460 (on pre-wedding videos rather than stills, some of them shot by photographers such as Param Patil of Sholapur: videos choreographed with music, dance and movie-style sets, sometimes costing more than the honeymoon; shared on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and ShareChat; shoots in parks, at monuments and inside temples; drones; a groom spinning his bride; Sets in the City, founded by the wedding photographer Rajesh Dembla, a 7.5-acre site in the Mumbai suburbs with 50 fake venues, make-up artists, outfits and lighting experts; Dheeraj Vijayan of White Owl Weddings on the pressure on photographers and choreographers for fresh ideas; a Thrissur photographer hanging upside down from a tree; a groom who fell into a lake during a shoot)
- Anagha Jayan E, 'Save the date: Evolving trends in Keralite wedding photography', Onmanorama (URL dated 10 December 2019): https://www.onmanorama.com/lifestyle/news/2019/12/10/save-the-date-viral-photoshoot-trends-wedding-photography-kerala.html (Kerala save-the-date and pre-engagement shoots with themes, costumes and film-scene re-creations at waterfalls, temples, backwaters and ancestral homes; Shalu M Abraham of Pinnacle Wedding Photography Company; viral shoots criticised as indecent and a Kerala Police post withdrawn after complaints of moral policing)
- Naina Redhu, 'Wedding Photography Interview', naina.co, 21 August 2012: https://www.naina.co/2012/08/wedding-photography-interview/ (an interview given to EXHIBIT magazine: weddings shot 'from a photojournalism and artistic point of view', an approach 'still very new for the Indian audience'; 'We cannot ape the American model of wedding photography because there the weddings aren't 1/10th as chaotic as they are in India'; a Fujifilm X100, 'a fixed lens camera, which I use most often', a Nikon D800 and D7000; 24–70 mm, 14–24 mm and 70–200 mm f/2.8 lenses, in that order)
- Mayukh Majumdar, 'Joseph Radhik: India's Biggest Wedding Photographer', Man's World India, 10 January 2019: https://www.mansworldindia.com/people/joseph-radhik-indias-biggest-wedding-photographer/ ('candid, bright' pictures with an 'inherently cinematic feel'; the Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas wedding and the Ambani–Piramal wedding)
- Joseph Radhik, Chennai Photo Biennale Foundation: https://chennaiphotobiennale.foundation/biennale/artists/joseph-radhik (co-founder of Stories; candid, real moments and portraits of celebrity couples)
- Amita Verma, 'Loved Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma's wedding pictures? Thank this man', Deccan Chronicle, 14 December 2017: https://deccanchronicle.com/entertainment/bollywood/141217/virushkas-wedding-lensman-is-a-city-guy.html (Joseph Radhik the official photographer of the wedding in Tuscany, Italy)
- The Quint with IANS, 'Virushka Get Hitched: All the Sabyasachi Looks From the Wedding', 11 December 2017: https://thequint.com/amp/story/news/india/sabyasachi-dressed-virushka-virat-anushka-dream-wedding (for the wedding day 'Anushka wore a pale pink lehenga with Renaissance embroidery in vintage English colours'; a restored village in Tuscany)
- Sneha Mehta, 'Have South Asian Weddings Reached Peak Pastel?', The Juggernaut, 29 September 2023: https://www.thejuggernaut.com/parineeti-chopra-wedding-pastel-indian-wedding (after Anushka Sharma's December 2017 wedding in a blush-pink Sabyasachi lehenga, colour 'all but disappearing' from high-profile South Asian weddings, with brides such as Alia Bhatt, Athiya Shetty, Kiara Advani and Parineeti Chopra in pale pink and ivory)
- Megha Varier, 'Why do brides have to paint their faces white? This bridal make-up artist asks', The News Minute, 5 October 2016: https://www.thenewsminute.com/features/why-do-kerala-brides-have-paint-their-faces-white-bridal-make-artist-asks-50901 (a Kochi make-up artist on brides asking to look fair and foundation used 'to lighten their skin tones', 'the result of social conditioning')
- Aditi Shrikant, 'Brides of color say influencer aesthetic has led to whitewashed skin in wedding pics', NBC News, 14 July 2022: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/brides-color-say-influencer-aesthetic-lead-whitewashed-skin-wedding-pi-rcna37884 (at a wedding in Mumbai the photographer tried to use natural light to make some guests look fairer; 'light and airy' presets washing out skin tones; Shilpa Davé on 'a light-skinned bias')
- Shashank Mhasawade, wedding photographs of 24–25 August 2013, Flickr (CC BY 2.0, licence confirmed by FlickreviewR on Wikimedia Commons): https://www.flickr.com/photos/shanky-d-chosen1/9601982955/ (described as 'The bride, groom and their family members go through myriad emotional moments. We capture the stories in pictures.'; EXIF Canon EOS 5D Mark III at 45–200 mm, f/2.8–f/4, ISO 400–3200, evening to after midnight)
- Kritzolina, 'Reflector of a professional wedding photographer', Wikimedia Commons, 27 April 2023: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Reflector_of_a_professional_wedding_photographer.jpg (a South Indian ceremony lit by continuous lights in shoot-through umbrellas beside lamps, flowers and banana leaves)
- Ji-Elle, 'Séance de photos de mariage à Jaipur (1)', Wikimedia Commons, 19 November 2019: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:S%C3%A9ance_de_photos_de_mariage_%C3%A0_Jaipur_(1).jpg (a couple photographed in a vintage open car in the courtyard of the City Palace, Jaipur, as part of a wedding photo session)
- Naina Redhu, 'Wedding Photography Interview', naina.co, 21 August 2012: https://www.naina.co/2012/08/wedding-photography-interview/ (cameras in order of use: Fujifilm X100, 'a fixed lens camera, which I use most often', Nikon D800, Nikon D7000; lenses 24–70 mm f/2.8, 14–24 mm f/2.8, 70–200 mm f/2.8)
- Shashank Mhasawade, wedding photographs of 24–25 August 2013, Flickr (CC BY 2.0): https://www.flickr.com/photos/shanky-d-chosen1/9601982955/ (EXIF: Canon EOS 5D Mark III at 45–200 mm, f/2.8–f/4, ISO 400–3200, evening to after midnight)
- Shashank Mhasawade - 9601982955 and 9605218436, Wikimedia Commons (EXIF): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Shashank_Mhasawade_-_9601982955.jpg (200 mm f/4, 1/200 s, ISO 640; 50 mm f/2.8, 1/160 s, ISO 400)
- AJAY SAKSHI, Vijay Shashwat Studio, Wikimedia Commons (EXIF): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AJAY_SAKSHI.jpg (Panasonic Lumix DC-S5, 85 mm f/1.8, 1/160 s, ISO 400, twilight couple shoot)
- Vinay Aravind, 'Flash Back: Evolution Of Wedding Photography', Outlook, 25 March 2024: https://www.outlookindia.com/amp/story/culture-society/flash-back-evolution-of-wedding-photography (new-age candid photographers using available light and 'virtually no direct flash')
