I must admit that I never saw myself on a pink background, but I guess in the wedding photography business one must get used to new things.
I am happy that the prestigious Smart Photography magazine have chosen to portray my work as a master craftsman in the November ’09 Wedding issue.
The interview itself will also be published online sometime later in the month, but I have included it here for those of you who have the patience to read all this text 
The experienced advertising and commercial oriented Israeli photographer, Sephi Bergerson, moved to India in order to pursue his dream of becoming a documentary photographer. What we admire the most in a career spanning close to a decade in India, is that his personal projects have always influenced his commercial work. Even though he only undertakes to shoot a small number of weddings, yet his images are conceptualized to be natural and spontaneous rather than being deliberately created for the occasion. This is because of the extreme devotion and attention that he gives to the couple, to not only try to understand them better but also to portray what their wedding day was like.
What do you like the most in photographing Indian weddings and secondly, what is your approach in capturing the big day since every wedding is different in terms of the diverse caste and customs in India?
I got into wedding photography only in October 2007, when I started working on my book ‘Traditional Weddings in Modern India’. This will be my third book in India after ’Street Food of India’ that was published in February 2009, and ‘Horn Please – trucking in India’ that will come out in early 2010.
As almost every subject that I pick up for a long-term personal project, the camera is only a method to study a social and cultural phenomenon. My personal projects have always influenced my commercial work and it was only a natural development that after shooting a few weddings people started approaching me for wedding assignments on a commercial basis.
I take on only a small number of weddings each year so that I do not loose the passion for shooting weddings. This way I am able to devote more care and attention to each couple with whom I work. I have the luxury of taking on only clients who are a step away from the ordinary (or many steps!). I devote extreme care and attention to each couple with whom I work and get to know them as a friend so that my images truly reflect who they are as a couple and what their day was like.
I document the wedding as it really was. The images are not deliberately created but rather they arise naturally and spontaneously, and the subjects are not given any direction on what to do. The approach is the same as for a photojournalistic assignment and the idea is to tell the story with images.
I set out on this project assuming there will be a lot of similarities between the various traditions, but I am so pleased to learn that the differences are many more than the similarities. It is a wonderful subject for a visual study.
What are the biggest challenges in this business apart from competition? Secondly, you shoot traditional wedding in an unconventional manner, is it an attempt to be different and how does the client react to the innovations in your art?
I do not think competition is an issue here. There are so many weddings that there is room for everyone. Unfortunately, traditional Indian wedding photography is still far from what is being offered in the west, and there are very few photographers in India that offer a documentary approach to wedding photography.
Although the Indian wedding industry is a fast growing business, the field of wedding photography in India is still less developed than in other parts of the world. To understand this, consider the US, where organizations, conventions and competitions for fine art wedding photography are already a routine. Top photography magazines grade their list of ten best wedding photographers every year. In India, that has not yet happened.
Wedding photography in India is still mostly dominated by the traditional wedding photographers. They know how to please your parents. They will take pictures of all your guests. They will also pose and photograph you in the same way as you can see in most wedding albums. Never the less, in the past few years, a whole new breed of wedding photographers has emerged determined to give the reputation of this line of work a serious makeover, and I think this will do good to everyone in this industry.
There are many different traditions of Indian weddings, but there are mainly two kinds of couples who get married in India: those who live in India and those who live abroad.
The first kind are most likely going to hire a local photographer. In many cases, it will be the same photographer who shot the weddings of the family for many years. The second kind – those who come to India for a destination wedding or come home to India to get married – have greater expectation from their wedding photographer and are more open to new styles and trends.
What equipments do you consider to be critical for wedding photography and how important is it to have a team along with you while photographing weddings?
As a photojournalist, I usually work alone and find it very convenient. It gives me the freedom to be myself and not feel like a wedding photography business operator. I do however feel that an assistant that would carry my bag and keep an eye on my gear would not be such a bad idea.
I have always maintained that photography is not about equipment. A good photographer can produce great images with any camera, and a good example is famous US based commercial photographer Chase Jarvis, who uses his iPhone camera to create some stunning images.
However, Indian wedding photos suffer from excessive use of flash, which is something I do not appreciate. Both Nikon and Canon offer professional digital SLRs with remarkably high light sensitivity of up to ISO 25600, making it is possible to shoot digitally in the once uncharted land of low light and dark shadow.
Many common scenes where light is marginal can now be captured without having to wash out the ambiance with flash, or bring everything to a dead stop for a long exposure. High-ISO photography has opened up a whole new world and is becoming very important to wedding and portrait photography.
Some scenes, especially on the dance floor, still require flash and for that I work with Nikon’s Creative Lighting System that gives me superb control of the amount and quality of artificially introduced light.
Tell us about the postproduction part (image editing in Photoshop). And how do you present the final output to the client, especially with Photobooks gaining popularity?
Being a documentary photographer and involved in projects for various clients around the world, I cannot spend a lot of time on the postproduction side of a wedding photography. For this reason I chose to work with a financial model that enables me to do the best job I possibly can, keep the couple happy and focus on what I do best which is photography, while not trying to make money on the prints, albums and all additional items that many photographers offer.
I charge the full amount of the professional fee up front and do not include albums as a standard part of my service. The client pays for my style, experience and expertise and I deliver the images on a DVD, which the client can use to make unlimited prints for personal use. This means that the couple can do pretty much anything they want with their pictures as long as it doesn’t generate any income for them or the people they share the images with. This gives the client many options such as creating their own album, having someone else make it, making digital slideshows instead of an album, or just printing the images at the local photo lab. The images on the disk are all high quality JPG files, color corrected and enhanced from the original RAW file.
This model enables me to get paid for my talent, overhead, business expenses and everything else necessary for me to stay in business and make the desired profit.
Have you encountered any unique, funny or interesting incident while photographing Indian weddings and if so take us through the episode?
There is an image that I like very much. It is from the morning after a wedding I photographed in Vishakapatnam. I went with the couple to a reservoir near the groom’s parent’s hometown of Vizianagaram (about 1.5 hours away from Visag) to take some fun pictures. This kind of shoot requires that we find a dramatic location near the wedding venue that will provide us with opportunities to get some fun images. It can be a beach, a forest, a desert location or any other place where we can have some privacy for a couple of hours without the family and friends. Creating these images needs time without the worry of attending a wedding. As such, it must happen on a different day from the wedding and we usually come away with some fantastic images! That morning at the reservoir the couple climbed into a small fishing boat and the fisherman took them for a small ride. The groom took his shoes off to get in the boat and when they climbed back out of the boat, I suddenly noticed his painted toes. I did notice it during the event itself but the situation here was simply funny. I think it is a great portrait of the newly wed couple, she in her sandals and mehendi , and he, barefooted in jeans, both with painted toenails. I don’t think it fits my book, but it is definitely one of my favorite pictures.
(thanks to Mathew Thottungal for the interview, and the opportunity)
