The Dream Team: Choosing your Photographer & Videographer
The right photography & videography team will make all the difference. | September 3, 2023 | 6 minute read
Get yourself a photographer who will hoist your sari in the name of a good photo. | PC: Flashing Lights Photography
The first vendors that Rohan & I focused on booking once we had our wedding dates locked was our photographer & videographer. We quickly put together a list of some of the companies whose work we had been noticing via Instagram, and weddings of friends & family, and got to work with interviews. And we tried our best to always take interviews for potential photo or video teams together, because we knew we both had to be extremely comfortable with the people we decided on, as we would likely end up spending more time with them than our bridal party during the wedding! (And that indeed happened).
When we interviewed potential photographers/videographers Rohan & I actually had pre-prepared interview questions that we planned to ask each vendor, as well as a list of things to keep an eye out for like:
Were they interested in getting to know us or were they only interested in our dates & budget size?
Did they ask questions to get to know us better (ex. What did we do for a living? How did we meet? How did Rohan propose? etc)
Were they open to our creative input on photoshoots & ideas for special things we wanted to capture at our wedding?
Although we chatted with a lot of talented photo and video entrepreneurs - Romi and Pranavan always stood out. And we are so happy we chose them.
Although we were aware of Flashing Lights Photography, Romi was also a referral from one of Rohan’s family friends. Romi immediately impressed us with his infectious energy and positive attitude, and we certainly felt a kinship with him!
Although he did not have many church weddings on his website at the time we interviewed him he made a point to get me access to his work on older church ceremonies so I could feel confident in his capability to capture all our unique religious events.
After meeting with many photographers Romi always stood out to us, and we unanimously decided we wanted this dancing photographer to capture our wedding.
And the fun began long before our wedding when Romi wholeheartedly embraced our engagement photo shoot idea to go downtown and recreate some of our initial dates!
Also it was a bonus blessing when Romi introduced us to Adhir of Bridal Tech Photography and Rishi of Devi by Kumar Images - whom he recruited as second shooters for our events. We instantly clicked with both of these amazing individuals who brought a wonderful energy to our wedding, and instantly bonded with our whole family & friends!
Pranavan was also one of those videographers whose work we had taken notice of and were already interested in, when that same family friend of Rohan’s recommended him as well!
In our initial meeting with Pranavan we felt as though we were chatting with a longtime friend of ours, rather than a vendor we had just met. We bonded over a shared interest in movies, and a desire to capture our wedding in a unique cinematic format. We saw his work, and were already sold on his craft, but after speaking with him we felt a similar comfortability with him that we knew would be important to create memorable time capsules together. We also loved how open Pranavan was to our ideas, and excited he was to do unique things unlike other weddings - including a music video shoot for our engagement/concept video - which you can check out here:
To top things off - when we shared our ‘secret project idea’ to capture a ‘mockumentary style episode’ of some portion of our wedding, involving our family and friends in an Office-style tribute - Pranavan’s reaction was only that of intrigue and hype. And that really sealed the deal for us.
Although we had mentioned the idea to a few other vendors we considered no one immediately jumped into brainstorming mode with us - except for Pranavan. He seemed to enjoy the challenge, and started thinking of unique ways we could capture docu-style footage, and how his team could support our plan to edit that footage into what we envisioned. The results of that are now available for the world to see:
And in the end, we couldn’t be happier with our choice of videographer because Ice Cream Truck films gave us these cinematic masterpieces that we get to call our wedding videos:
In the end - our photo and video shoots during the wedding, which sometimes took place 12-15 hours after I woke up for my makeup and hair, were nothing but fun and memorable as we got to spend them with our dream team - which included Adhir, Jai, Vino - and which were led by the incomparable Romi & Pranavan.
