Wedding props, more than just props

Booming Indian Wedding Industry

Up until five years back, India saw over 10 million weddings every year. The numbers might have naturally plummeted to a new high by now. Half of the nearly 900 tons of gold consumed in India is bought during wedding seasons!

New era. Newer trends.

Undoubtedly, no one does weddings like Indians. There’s loads of feasting, hundreds of guests, themes, and the right choice of jewellery and invitation card designs is all captured like a movie in exquisite photoshoots. Given this generation’s preferences, innovative wedding shoots has been the new craze since a while.

With the fact that the number of wedding shoots has been increasing, could it be possible that almost every other shoot looks like a clone of some or the other shoot? Could it be possible that for a photographer, it becomes a challenge to make each wedding shoot a unique one?

When props are more than just props

My experience counteracts this redundancy with two different tricks–by the way of exploring newer angles and by incorporating props. A sweet gesture, a whimsical element, or a sentimental memento at weddings can take your pictures to a completely new level.

For instance, this particular photograph, clicked with Full Frame Mirrorless Sony A9 paired with SEL50M28 macro lens at the time of Muhurtham, focuses on the ritual rather than just the bride and her face. The frame could have been pale had I not put a creative spin on the photo with the macro lens and its bokeh effect on the bride’s jewellery.

If you look at how the jewellery acts as a prop in the picture, then it explains a lot about extreme surface precision that eliminates optical imperfections for beautiful bokeh. The lens balance is the key here for a fluid transition from extreme sharpness to luxurious smooth bokeh without jarring lines and edges.

A shutterbug’s delight

Now, with the limited number of minutes that a moment like these last is significantly short, which is why I made it sure to keep the shutter speed at 400. It’s important for me to not just miss out on a single move but also to single out the most elegant, the liveliest, vocal and memorable compositions.

Needless to point out, yet, an important enabler is the lightweight body of A9, which gives you the liberty to a quick and attentive opportunist. Full frame photographers tend to, instantly, develop a likeliness and familiarity with the chemistry of A9 with a 50mm lens. The 50mm lens proves to an ideal length with an aperture as wide as 2.8 excellent low light performance.

When you have a lens that supports your camera in impeccable shooting situations with an effective, fast and accurate autofocus, it gets easy to add a personal touch to photographs. Besides having a lightweight body and technological superiority, faster autofocus is one of the main reasons that I prefer Sony wide range of lenses, not only for just this particular picture but every other kind of picture too. I’ve gradually shifted to the new range of G Master for most of my shooting needs.

Get creative

Overall, it never becomes a tough task to be technically right with your photographs with this combination. What makes it unique and gives it a character of its own is when you explore these features and get creative with your own ideas and compositions.

Different lens, for different perspectives

Keep on exploring new technologies because each composition needs the expertise of specific cameras and lenses to complement your ideas the best.

For instance, when it comes to beautiful defocus effects, I go for the Premium mid-range G Master SEL2470GM telephoto prime lens. On the other hand, the Premium G Master SEL20700GM telephoto zoom lens gives me a vantage point for landscapes and wedding portraits with its brilliant focal length. There’s nothing like the sharpness and smooth bokeh of the well-designed, mid-range SEL85F15 telephoto prime lens for portraits, for me.

To include background effects for creative freedom, as seen in this picture, the SEL50M28 macro prime lens never lets me down for everyday photography and an impressive 1:1 macro photo composition. In fact, adding a 28mm prime such as the SEL28F20 lens to your kit goes a long way to supplement a basic lens kit for extra expressive potential.