Pre-wedding and post-wedding photo shoots may soon be passe. For, wedding photographers in the country say they're taken aback by a new, and rather uncomfortable, trend that's emerging: of couples asking for nude/semi-nude photo shoots on the wedding night.
Guragon-based Priyanka Sachar, who does couple shoots, recently got a request from a groom-to-be in Lucknow. "He wanted an intimate photo shoot - a couple shoot - with nude poses on his wedding night. I had to turn down the request, because I was not comfortable doing something like that," says Priyanka, adding, "It's not as though nude photography does not happen. In fact, boudoir photography is fairly common, where a woman may want to capture the best of herself. And it is done very tastefully. But clicking a couple on their wedding night - I'm not sure if the couple is actually being kinky or just wants pictures for themselves?" Faizan Patel, a Delhi-based photographer also recalls a request from a nude photoshoot for a couple earlier this year. "And this was supposed to be a pre-wedding shoot!" says Faizan, who also turned down the request, "And since the request was coming from the guy, I asked him to first check with the girl if she would be okay with something like this. I, for one, was not comfortable with the idea," he explains, "Also, if I cannot share my work with others, or online, it does not add to my profile. So it did not make sense for me to do a shoot like that."
While wedding photographers says that couples kissing in their wedding pictures is fairly common in India now, couples wanting to pose in the buff on their wedding night isn't. " So far, we've had various kinds of photography being adopted into wedding photography. For example, fashion photography became a part of wedding shoots some years ago. Then, there was candid photography. Nude photography was the only element that hadn't been incorporated so far at Indian wedding," says Sushant, a Delhi-based wedding photographer, who cannot quite believe this is for real.
Nitin Dangwal, another wedding photographer based in Chandigarh, says the farthest he's gone is doing a post-wedding photo shoot for a couple in the hotel bedroom. "But it was a fun shoot. There are things you can do in a hotel banquet hall or at the wedding venue, and there are things you can do in a bedroom. Like getting them to pose with a pillow, or on the sofa. So, that was the idea of that shoot. But a nude photoshoot? No," he says. Recalling a similar request from a couple in Mumbai a year ago, city-based photographer Yashwant Dhwaj Shah says, "The couple was getting married in Mumbai and got my number from a common friend. While they had hired a set of photographers from Mumbai to shoot their wedding functions, they wanted me to shoot some special moments of their wedding night, which was at a beach resort near Mumbai. Just to refuse them politely, I quoted a very high amount as my fees, but they agreed even to that! Finally, I turned down the offer saying I wasn't comfortable accompanying a newly married couple on their wedding night and shooting their private moments. The thought itself was quite weird."
Not everyone though is averse to the idea. Amit Mahendru says he shot a semi-nude pre-wedding photoshoot for an NRI couple at a city club located on the outskirts of Lucknow in March this year. "To say that I was comfortable doing it would be far from the truth, in fact there were many embarrassing moments between the shots, where the couple were more forthcoming than I was actually prepared for," says Amit, who says he charged a bomb for the shoot.
source : times of india