Those days are over when, during a wedding, a middle-aged photographer with thinning hair stood in the middle of the aisle, clicking pictures of the ceremony and blocking the view of half the guests. Candid wedding photography, helmed by a tribe of young, sophisticated photographers, is the ‘in’ thing now. Wedding shoots are getting more adventurous by day, with couples riding elephants to the venue, or floating on hot-air balloons while staring into each other’s eyes.
Think of all the possible naughty moments at a wedding—the bridegroom throwing his brother-in-law into the pool, the big fat uncle pole-dancing without a pole, the father of the bride doing his best Clint Eastwood impression—and if you are looking for someone who has a knack for being at the right place at the right time, Anand Rathi is your man.
He is one of the premier wedding photographers in the country, with an impressive resume that includes names like the Birlas, Rosy Blue Diamonds and Tech Mahindra. He is also the founder of Reels & Frames, a “documentary photography and film company” that specialises in wedding, lifestyle, maternity, infant and corporate photography.
“All artists have a style, and what distinguishes our company from others is that we do a lot of photojournalism using mostly natural sources of light,” he says. “We don’t keep trying to reinvent ourselves. Also, we do everything in-house, so we have complete control over quality.”
Rathi is, what you might call, an accidental photographer. He was an engineer and stock market trader who went to the US to do his MBA and fell in love with his DSLR camera, which he took with him during all his travels. Some pictures he took of a classmate’s wedding went viral after they were uploaded on Facebook. When he came back to India, he used to work in finance during weekdays, and shoot for companies like L’Oréal during the weekends. Until, one day, he came to a crossroads in his life and decided that his true passion lay in capturing people’s happily-ever-after moments.
It has been an interesting journey so far, with many unique experiences. Like doing a pre-wedding shoot underwater. “The bride was a scuba diver and wanted to do a shoot in Mauritius,” he says. “I spent three days getting a certificate in scuba diving, so I could do it. Mastering swimming in the ocean is tricky, but I found the experience to be unreal. It gave me a real high to shoot professionally underwater.”
His company also released India’s first virtual reality wedding film two years ago. “We had no way to pre-visualise the result,” he says. “So, when we came back and edited it, we knew we had done something truly special.”
Perhaps the most high-profile wedding he did recently was the Sonam Kapoor-Anand Ahuja one. He got a call one day two to three months before the wedding and went to meet Sonam’s mother Sunita Kapoor and sister Rhea. As he says: “Our sensibilities clicked.” He has described Sonam earlier as a ‘bridechilla’ instead of a bridezilla, because of how cool she remained throughout the wedding. “Sonam is a rockstar,” he says. “She is such a joyful person to be around. You don’t have to ask her to smile or pose. Also, the chemistry between her and Anand was fantastic, which made my job easy.”
Surprisingly, no brief was given to him before the wedding, except to be truthful while describing what was happening. “Big weddings can be a tight-rope walk, because there are so many days [of functions and ceremonies] and so many things can go wrong,” he says. “But Sonam’s was a big happy wedding. Her family was very welcoming so there was no pressure [to perform], and people were really happy. The vibe was delightful.”
He says he feels no nervousness before high-profile weddings. “We do our best to eliminate all possibilities of anything going wrong,” he says. “The rest is luck.”