Band, baaja and photos

“I would think, when there are so many good people out there, why would someone pay me to click photos?” says Joseph, who was brought up in Hyderabad. Joseph shot his first wedding in January 2010. “By June 2010, I was working five days a week as a business development manager in Pune and on Fridays I would fly out to shoot weddings and come back early on Monday, edit the photos from Tuesday onward and again fly out on Friday,” says Joseph, who is now one of the most famous, and expensive, wedding photographers in the country.

Months later Joseph quit his job and took up photography as a full-time career. “By February 2011, we were shooting wedding films for good. That’s how the whole journey started,” says Joseph, who won the first place at the International Photography Award in New York last year under the people’s wedding category. “India’s obsession with social media started the same year when I started. You can either say it was luck or divine intervention, I am going with the latter one. In November 2010, I was invited to speak at an event at Lamakaan. I had not finished one whole year of working but people here already knew me.”

His first celebrity wedding shoot was that of Allu Arjun and Sneha. “While I was speaking at the Lamakaan event, a music director and a film director were also present in the audience. The music director came up to me and informed that one of his friends, Bunny, was getting married and I should click his wedding photos. I said okay. I was not much into Tollywood so I didn’t know who he was. Ten days later I met Allu Arjun and his brother. Allu Arjun’s wedding pushed my name within the Hyderabad circle, a month prior to that I shot Pernia Qureshi’s wedding and that ensured that I was introduced to the Delhi circle,” he says, adding, “A few months later Ram Charan called us to cover his engagement and for a portfolio shoot of Upasana. In 2011, if you ask me, did we become famous because there were only few wedding photographers back then? I would say no, it’s because what social media did at that time and the fact that these people hired me, and the last fact, the work was very good. Pernia called 10 days after and said, ‘I have never seen wedding photos like this and I never knew you were doing this during my wedding’.”

So what makes him different? “Today, there are about 28,000 candid wedding photographers in India. What makes us different is the fact that we are excited about shooting the next wedding as we were on the first day.”