There is a paradigm shift going on in India.
If you are in your late twenties and your early thirties, you may not see it as a great change per se, but anybody older will definitely agree to this.
For a very long time, traditional photography for our weddings and other family gatherings meant pictures of man & woman of the hour, group pics of friends & family with the couple in the dais, varied angles of the ceremony and that’s it. The very act of capturing the happiness, the smiles, the giggles and all kinds of happy celebration stuff was off the books….in the name of being traditional, professional coverage.
The veteran photographers seem to have a different platform altogether for their clicks of anything other than the so-called professional clicks. When we confronted one such photographer about the lack of candid moments on his coverage for a wedding, he first tried to brush off the candids that I took as mobile clicks, then offered to include them in the album as an extra feature for extra cost. That was his entire response to our question.
You can call it globalization or you can call it as coming to senses but we are starting to understand the value of capturing those so-called moments and smiles all around. You see, this kind of an issue is a bit unheard of in the western world. There are always shots of the ceremony but documenting the happy moments and ones that bring emotional impacts has always been a major priority.
One can very well argue that it could be a case of the sheer number of activities involved in the ceremony. With so many different activities lined up for the bride and groom to be instructed by the priest, the photographer has so much in his plate that he can’t afford to turn around and click the fun and frolic. Yet, after we realized the importance of capturing these moments, especially for weddings, that necessity bred the introduction of Pre-wed shoots.
It could have been a blatant copy or an inspiration from our movie industry or a brainchild of an unknown angel photographer, call it whatever you want, we finally got a taste of how beautiful and heart-warming these candid and pre-wedding shoots can get and this trend is staying for good. This break from the so called professional/traditional shoots of yesteryears and the fact that such shots of people dancing, singing, stealing glances and just being flat out overcome with emotions; apart from the ceremony is almost accepted as a part of coverage of a modern-day professional shoot is a good thing.
In fact, it is a great thing!
If capturing a ceremony does not fall into candid, then could it be accepted that a picture of a tear from the bride at the moment of tying the knot or wearing the ring to be traditional? Most photographers nowadays work in teams. A part of the team fully concentrates on bagging the traditional and money shots and the other part works solely for candids.
So, what is candid photography? Where does the definition start and end? What kind of photography actually comprise of candids? How can one make sure that there is no lack of candid clicks during an event?
Too many questions. One simple answer.
There is no special category called candid photography.
This is a truth as practical as the fact that there is earth below the water that covers 70% of our planet. It is just our way of acknowledging that there was a whole new level of photography that was staring in our face for the whole time we were covering ourselves with blanket of so-called professional shots. There are literally a number of genres in photography that were once not even considered some time ago. I am pretty sure that some of the headings in my very own portfolio would not be accepted some time ago.
Take for example street photography or the wonderful works of VIVIAN Maier, nobody originally thought that these would be world renowned one day.
They needed a place for parking while they tried to figure out what is the proper name to call a particular style. Once it clicked, its not "CANDID SHOTS" anymore. The style now had its very own dedicated genre.
But wait. That does not mean that the word candid does not have its own meaning. It does. The dictionary defines the word candid as honest, unaltered, truthful, sincere and voluntary reactions and the norm for that in photography is that it should have been taken without the knowledge of the subject. The thing is, almost all beautiful moments are captured and documented with the subject having no idea that someone is clicking. However, it doesn’t have to be explicitly so. There are tonnes and tonnes of shots where people knew there is someone clicking away and didn’t care because they were so busy involved in the moment. You can see such shots in a lot of weddings especially in the western world.
So. yeah, stop worrying about what category your shot will get into.
Trust that it will one day change the platform for good and it might even get its own genre.
In fact, there are a number of examples in the real world where the original click did not have a special category until a collection of similar clicks became a huge hit. Just go to Instagram and search for #suyambu. It is a series of black and white smiles curated by an absolutely wonderful and down to earth photographer called Naveen Gowtham; who one day had a wonderful idea of collecting smiles. They are so heartfelt and real that they were the actual definition of the word candid. But you would feel it in your heart that those pictures deserve much more respect than what we are used to give to the ones categorized as candid.
I myself have an idea for a series of photograph where I try to document the subject observing or admiring another action in the frame. I have thought about it day and night and have decided to call it “4th Wall Photography”. Just like the concept of the 4th wall break in movies when the actor directly interacts with the audience through the camera. To me, in these shots, I engage the onlooker of the picture to be the audience of what is happening in the picture, just as the subject themselves are experiencing something. For example, i have shot of a kid with his back to the camera staring at an elephant in front of him. To me, that is a shot where i engage the onlooker to admire how mesmerized this kid was while he was staring at the elephant. Just like the audience is sitting on the 4th wall of a movie.
I put all that kind of (so called) sophistication and abstract thought into the proper name for my click and guess what name naturally comes to people if they are required to categorize this click?
Yeah. CANDID!!
Forget the norms, embrace your creativity and let it engulf you. We can worry about what niche your click fills later, for we always have a parking space called CANDID.