Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): The small-time wedding photographers in the city are searching for the light of the day as the tech-savvy generation has led to a binary divide.
The youths that follow every trend they see on social media have left the small-time wedding photographers fearing for their jobs as the latter either have to upgrade their technology or perish, they claim.
A wedding photographer in Subhash Nagar, Arvind Bengani, says, 'The technology has handed over a smart phone in every hand. If one cannot afford the wedding photography of one's dreams, they prefer clicking pictures on their own smart phones and getting them printed from the studio.'
'Gadgets like Go Pro and high-pixel camera phones have taken over our industry. People shoot pictures themselves and they just need an album made thereafter from us. For the videos too, everyone is these days have an amateur video editor with so many applications available on play stores,' adds Bengani, whose studio is 30 years old and is now striving to survive.
'Not more than half-a-decade ago, the wedding season used to be peak time for our business. The previous generations had no business coming in the way of our methods. But, the people today simply follow trends set by the celebrities,' says 53-year-old Munawwar Ali, who runs a photo studio in Jumerati area in the city.
'My son has taken over the studio and comes up with a new idea inspired from celebrity weddings every day despite being low on funds,' he adds.
Bank loans, which are difficult to get, have become the only way to expand their studio into making the dreamy-wedding photography the new generation demands, he says.
'Shooting and making a wedding film and album is a costly affair and involves technicality,' says a pre-wedding photographer Arjun Bijoliya.
'There are couples who come to me with their dream wedding ideas and we have to implement them. They are inspired from professionally shot pictures they see on social media. It's expensive and not everyone can afford it,' he says.
'Those who cannot afford it prefer not hiring photographers as their phones are mostly enough for the basic wedding shots, risking the business of small-time. The system has become binary-have it all or get nothing,' adds Bijoliya.
