Grand weddings, grander portraits!

Brides of the era

It is hard to imagine today, in our age of general compulsion to, not share every sliver of the self on social media, yet, portraits still remain to be one of the most intimate and a private way to express our vulnerable selves, especially as a bride.

It is that moment which she’ll revisit years after years and still feel flutters in her stomach, she’ll look at her younger self and try to remember her, relate with her and try to get closer to her. It’s a map of her epic moments.

Wedding portraits: Composition & narratives

The choice of colour matters to add a punch, an element of timelessness for such portraits. To captivate the grandeur and the visual novelty, a bride’s portrait needs to move away from aesthetic consumerism of photography and derive its strength from an assertive and a creative stance.

The bride & the environment

For instance, this particular portrait of this bride, clicked with Sony Alpha A9 Full Frame camera paired with SEL1635GM Lens,

is all about creating and communicating the complete story of the bride and her environment.

Indian weddings are usually crowded and the bride’s narrative tends to lose its essence in all the hum-drum; she becomes less of a subject and more of a part of the background. If you choose to make her stand out from the crowd through a narrative angle that I took, then it is vital to remember the lighting and position of your subject in relation to the background.

With a deep depth of field and detailed background full of colours and reflections, the bride’s pastel-colored attire, expression and pose makes sure that the background supports her story. It only adds meaning to the story rather than being an element of noise.

Portray what you mean to

The stunning, high corner to corner resolution and sharpness of SEL1635GM, is made even better with G Master Performance in an incredible, wide-angle, F2.8 16-35mm zoom, focused on every single pixel of the frame. Its mastered performance gave me ample amount of creative freedom to make, both, the bride and the aesthetics stand out in perfect harmony with each other.

The ability of the lens to differentiate contrasts for each situation, be it a landscape, architecture or other expansive subjects, comes as an effective aid to a photographer. For instance, the uncompromised optical design of this G Master lens got me an extremely high, corner to corner resolution and clear color differentiation between the background and the subject with its high contrast capabilities.

G Master: Angles & edges

In fact, shooting weddings – as an alternative narrative to the portraits – on the 16-35mm G Master lens is spot on with its wide-angle shots framing more people and absorbing more of the backdrop and environment than any other lens is capable of.

To convey the complete story of the bride, I took a low angle shot to create the desired effect and the light-weighted lens and body, with a tiltable screen worked wonders for me to get this angle. A lightweight all-rounder and a limited set of equipment to carry around, such as the 16-35mm G Master Lens, more than suffices for all almost most of the photography requirements.