5 Reasons Why You Should Hire a Creative Photographer for Your Wedding

A wedding is one of the most special events in a person’s life. The beginning of your marriage – the promise of a new life interspersed with the need to preserve nuances of the old; extreme exhilaration mingled with excessive nervousness; joyous excitement with a tinge of the beautiful sadness of nostalgia. Perhaps the old English rhyme about the good luck charms a bride carries with her on a wedding day, best sums up the day itself: Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue.

Ever thine, ever mine, ever ours.

But weddings bring with them a whole load of frenzied planning – Whom to call? What to wear? Where to have it? When? Who’ll the caterer be? And the beautician? Where will the guests stay? What…. Phew! So amidst all these difficult decisions, should you really add one more to the list, and set about hiring a creative professional to capture your special day? Yes. Emphatically so. I’ll explain why.

1. The Event

It’s your wedding – a once in a lifetime affair. And Indian weddings in particular, are not just a celebration of love between two individuals – they are a much-anticipated and emotionally charged event for your families too. The memories you leave behind of this day for yourself, for your loved ones and for posterity, are best represented through photographs. So that would be the number one reason why this is one area you absolutely shouldn’t scrimp on.

2. The Professional

Why hire, though? Won’t that young cousin with a DSLR and an FB page, who makes a general pestilence of himself going click-click all the time, do? Not really. Creative photography is a lot more than a camera. The equipment matters, of course, which professionals have a better understanding of than amateurs anyway. But there are a thousand other aspects to keep in mind – from handling the lighting, to beautifully managing the variation in skin tones, to understanding the symbolism behind a particular ritual or theme in order to decide exactly how it should be depicted – all of these require a great deal of thought and care, which is exactly where the keyword creative comes into play. Also, a lot of the work begins AFTER the actual photos have been taken, from light touch-ups and editings to making the final album/s.

3. The Approach

It’s your big day, so you should get to decide how it is represented, right? There are a variety of techniques you could go with, like the traditional way, the photojournalistic tactic, the fashion-based method, or the themed variation. Ignoring the jargon, what this means is that creative photographers essentially take your instincts and weave them into a cohesive technique, which ultimately decides what your wedding album ends up looking like.

4. The Detailing

It’s the little things in life, they say, that matter the most. And so it goes with weddings. Spotting and working with appropriate moments, like your father quickly stealing a tear, or your niece stealthily stuffing cake into her mouth; or minute details, like the ring glistening on his finger or her special hairdo – all of these require exquisitely delicate handling, so the moment itself doesn’t go uncaptured, but it also doesn’t become intrusive.

5. The Glitch

The best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley. As much as you want otherwise, in something as massive as a wedding, there are bound to be a few bloopers. A creative photographer always has a plan B, should things turn different. What if, for example (and God forbid), it starts to rain during your open air wedding? A creative photographer will ensure that a hurried change of the venue (affecting the lighting, contrasts) does nothing to dim the charm of your wedding pictures. Like Spiderman, she/he is prepared for every eventuality.

As Nikki Wagner says (very truthfully, if somewhat brutally), “The food and cake get flushed down the drain (quite literally). The venue and accommodations will serve as faint backdrops to your memories. The flowers will wilt and decorations, be tossed away. The entertainment will be a ringing in your ears the following morning. Your makeup will be washed away and the hair slept on. Your wedding dress will remain, but there will never again be a practical occasion to wear it. Of all these unnecessary, impractical, and conspicuous expenses, the photo and video documents hold the most utility. Their value increases with time, having an inverse relationship to your recollection of the day.”

So while planning your wedding, do spare a serious thought for the person who’s going to be responsible for crafting the final imprint of this day, for all days to come. True love stories never have endings – so should the memories of the day you swore eternal love on, be eternal.