The day starts before the muhurtham
A Telugu wedding is not one morning. Pellikoduku and pellikuthuru the day before, the snathakam, the kashi yatra with its umbrella and the walk everyone knows is coming — that is where most of the photographs with real faces in them happen. We are there from the first function, not from the muhurtham.
Working around a fixed muhurtham
The muhurtham is set by the panchangam and it does not move for a photographer. Plenty of them fall between four and seven in the morning, in a hall lit for a different purpose. We arrive before the family does and light for those hours, then work without flash through the ritual itself — a flash firing during kanyadanam is the fastest way to be remembered badly.
Kanyadanam, jeelakarra bellam, the mangalsutra and talambralu follow each other closely, and some of them are over in under a minute. Two photographers is not an upsell on a Hindu wedding: one camera cannot be behind the bride's family and in front of the couple at the same moment, and both of those frames matter.
The family portraits
The part that actually gets printed and hung. We keep a block aside after the muhurtham while everyone is still in one room and still dressed, and we work through it quickly — grandparents first, because they leave first.
