Career Options In Wedding Photography

Weddings, as the name suggests, are filled with ample pomp and show coupled with massive celebrations that continue for seven days or more. Indian weddings are a mixture of emotions and happiness. Be it the groom’s joyful excitement or the bride’s feeling of sadness to be far away from her dear ones, an expression of overwhelming happiness or just a simple modest appearance. All of these feelings, the moments, a sight, that emotions tempt you to get itself clicked, has to be candid. Candid Photography is as special as the everyday life and so is a very popular forte of wedding photography these days.

What Is Candid Wedding Photography?

Wedding Photography can not be elucidated but instead is felt. It is an art to gracefully collect all the memories of your big day. Wedding Photography is gaining a lot of popularity in the new era. Capturing all the minute expressions and little details of the wedding, as candid as it gets, is the real just of this branch of Photography.

Different types in Wedding Photography, You Can Make a Career In!

Wedding Photography offers various trends and different styles. Nowadays, with the ever increasing demand of such photography, there are numerous styles generated out of the wedding themes which every couple wants to have.

It is true that not all photographers practice all styles. Some may have their expertise in artistic, while some may only cover the bridal photo-shoots, another’s forte might be pre-wedding shoots. But it always helps to be well-informed of all the wedding photography styles.

Below are some of the styles that you can try if you want to become a wedding photographer. It will provide you with a brief idea of what are the different wedding photography styles you should know and what you can expect from them. But before we get on to the styles, know the different types of wedding photography.

• Bridal Photo-shoot – This type of photo shoot will take you back in the days of your parents’ and grandparents’ weddings. Bridal photo-shoots comprise all the formal poses of a bride’s transformation. You’ll have to cover the entire process of a bride getting ready for her big day. All those traditional poses, clean and classic compositions, lots of stiff posing and smiling, pictures that make all the elderly happy.

• Pre and Post Wedding Shoots – These are rather intimate focusing on only the bride and groom, the immense love that they share. Nowadays, these shoots are gaining huge popularity and even the couples are more tickled about it than the marriage and reception photographs. True emotions of all the stored up wedding jitters are perfectly captured in this type of photography.

• Candid/Documentary Wedding Photography – Candid Photography is what every couple yearns for these days. It is considered to be one of the most sought after styles by the soon-to-wed couples. Such photographers don’t let you feel their presence yet capture the most beautiful moments of your wedding day, which could be easily missed. The perfect moments, the smiles and tears of the day are captured beautifully through a watchful eye of the photographer.

• Lifestyle Wedding Photography – This branch basically captures all the candid moments with minimal directions and styling. It will offer you with a relaxed approach and lets you do it as per your discretion.

• Fine Art/Artistic Wedding Photography – This type of photography comprises the use of various artistic props along with the smart play of lighting. You will be required to have a keen eye and understanding of artistic elements and know well how to use them to make the bride look like no one has ever seen her before.

• Editorial/Dramatic Wedding Photography – This style is inspired by modern fashion photography. It comprises all the dramatic props, lighting, and set-ups that will ultimately make the final photographs look extraordinary. But, this style is time-consuming and you will not be able to find time between the festivities. However, there are couples who love the whole concept and take out a day from the schedules after the wedding for this type of photo-shoot.

• Destination Wedding Photography – This branch has become extremely popular these days. The new age modern couples are opting to frisk far away from home to celebrate their big day. This wedding photography style candidly captures all the beautiful moments of a couple along with the landscapes, architecture, culture, religion, customs, and natural elements of the destination. Whether it’s an intimate beach wedding in Goa or an elaborate affair in Jaipur, the images will clearly reflect the destination through the fine details captured.

• Wedding Cinematography – This branch of photography tells a story, a love story, that is compiled in a cinematic style filming. It is the beautiful filming of images that are captured before, during and post wedding to tell the story of the couple’s personalities, how they met, how their fairytale wedding came true and the possible great future together.

• Drone Photography: This is a type of photography that will give you an aerial view of how the God’s must be watching the ceremonies from above. If you’re passionate about photography have a creative mind and imagination, Drone Photography is for you. Also, this style is reaching certain heights and being happily accepted by many adventurous couples.

• Regular Wedding Photography and Videography: Last but not the least, this is the simplest of them all and covers an entire marriage ceremony and reception. Starting from all the highlights, the band-baja to the bridal outfit, the rituals to decoration, from foods to the vidai ceremony, all that you can think of in a wedding is shot and filmed to store timeless memories by such photographers.

Read: Make A Career In Photography In India

Difficulties for a Wedding Photographer!

Just like every profession, wedding photography also has certain cons.

No doubt it comes with ample number of highlights and positive attractions to it. But not everyone is a cut out for such a thing. Read on to find some of the major difficulties in wedding photography.

• Getting a Shoot – You need to have an experience of  shooting weddings to get hired, but you can’t get experience until you get hired. It surely is a difficult job.

• MYTH – “Wedding Photographers have to work one day of the week, and they make tons of cash.” NO! They work a normal 5 day/week; they have to arrange meetings, further engagement shoots in the evenings, and then shoot entire weddings on Saturdays or even Sundays, and then edit thousands of photographs in the minimum time. Ain’t nothing that easy!

• Weddings are SEASONAL – You will not be able to find work throughout the year. You will have to try either to make adequate money in the wedding season to get yourself through the rest of the year, or you will have to find ways to keep bringing in money when the weddings stop. It’s surely a big challenge.

• Exhausting shoots – Weddings are usually around 7-8 hours of shooting, which commonly jump up to 15. All this and more requires pretty much continuous mental and physical efforts because you have to follow the bride and groom, documenting their experiences while having to remain active and cheery at every moment!

• Be Unique – Basing your style on a trend can be dangerous. Your style will evolve as you emerge as an artist. The key to making it unique is to neglect what all the other shooters are doing, and pay attention to your own personal voice.

Weddings are a LOT of work! I don’t want to scare anyone by all these difficult parts of being a wedding photographer, but yes, it can be scary and tough. It all depends on how you manage to make yourself stand out because once the winds change, you’re old news. On the contrary, there are a ton of wonderful things about the job as well.

Be it a positive or a negative effect, make sure you enter this industry with a realistic and hardheaded expectation of what it will take to be successful. If you’re passionate about what you want to do, you will definitely have the energy and commitment required to make a solid business out of it.

After all, becoming a wedding photographer implies that you will get to eat all the food and tasty cake! Well, that’s a sign of a really magical job! Good luck 🙂

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