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Transcript
Prashanth Naik Co-Founder Indievisual
Vineet
Hello and welcome back to Photosynthesis Individuals Podcast where we talk about the art, the culture, the business of photography and videography in India with some of the most expert and the best creators that we’ve ever come across. Today is a very special episode because the guest is actually my co-founder Prashant Naik. Hi Prashant, welcome to the show and we’re going to be discussing a topic that you’ve spent many years on which is
Nike
Hey, Amen.
Vineet
wedding photography and videography. So, we’re going to break this down into, again, the art and the business part of it. The skill and of course how you make money because wedding photography is known to be the one stable area for making money. For earning a living basically, that’s what they’re making money. For earning a living for videographers and photographers. So, firstly, how did you get into it?
Nike
Okay? Alright.
Nike
Yeah.
Vineet
What prompted you to get into it? Did you have a soft start like friends wedding or something? Or did you make a conscious decision that I am going to learn, I’m going to work my way up.
Nike
No, no, I was very much into photography for a while. And, you know, social media, then at that time, I think Flickr was the biggest hangout place for photographers. So Flickr, I had reasonably decent following on Flickr. Yeah, and then obviously a lot of friends, they were like, you’re so good at it, why don’t you, you know, make a career out of it, right?
Vineet
Oh yeah.
Nike
And I tried different options. I, you know, enrolled myself as a contributor on Getty Images. I was even a contributor on Nat Geo stock, you know. Adobe stock didn’t exist at that time. So I tried to make a living out of photography, right? And I didn’t get published in Nat Geo magazine, Lonely Planet magazine. But that doesn’t pay you. They’ll just kind of, you know.
using your, and for you it’s a great privilege to be published on these magazines, right? So I could see clearly very limited path for me to make a career out of this, out of photography. So then I think, yeah, actually there was one friend who said, why don’t you shoot my wedding? And at that time I was like…
No, I don’t want I’m not ready for it because I was more again landscapes and you know, like I was shooting because I loved it. I didn’t want to I was no I didn’t know I was not really ready for wedding photography per se. But I think that a year or two later when I was sort of transitioning, you know, from my startup. I was like, what do I do next? And then I said, why don’t I try this? I’ll give it a shot.
And that’s how I actually… And it was pretty easy for me to get a first, you know, leg into one of the first wedding projects. And that’s how it started. So for me, it’s not really something that I wanted to get into.
Vineet
So, but in fact how did you get that first project? What was that first project? Was it with a friend, a known person, a reference?
Nike
Yeah, yeah, it was, it was in fact my wife’s sister’s college junior who used to follow me on Facebook, used to follow me, I think Insta was not really big at that time, used to follow me on Facebook, used to follow me on my work. And then she was like, she reached out to my wife and then through that. So it’s basically
Yeah, just so happened that while I was in transition phase, something kind of came up and I said, okay, let’s give it a shot.
Vineet
And how, so you were a photographer primarily. Then, how did you go about planning this? Because one thing about weddings is like anything else, a shoot goes wrong. There is a fallback. It’s expensive, it’s tedious, but there’s a fallback. With a wedding, there is no, there’s no plan B. It has to work.
Nike
Yeah. Yes.
Nike
Yeah, so it was very challenging. I think the first project is always that way. But because again, it was somebody who’s not a friend, but at least somebody who I knew. And it came naturally to me, I would say. On the planning side, it was, you know, like I spoke to a couple of people and I had a cinematographer with me or a videographer with me who…
was doing a lot of video projects. And he knew a lot of the, you know, the customs and that’s where the challenge is, right? Different customs that you really need to focus on or capture in a certain way and those sort of things. So he was aware of that. So that made it easy. But yes, there is no plan B and if he had screwed that up, if I had screwed that up, it would have been like, very, very bad. Yeah, it would have been very bad. But it really went very well.
Vineet
Life would have been very different.
Nike
They loved it and I enjoyed myself and you know, so just overall it was a good start
Vineet
And then where did you take it? From there.
Nike
Yeah, so from there I realized that naturally I mean, yeah, I was hesitant. I don’t know for some reason because you know, wedding is too personal, you know, like, um, and like you said, there are some challenges. I came from more landscape kind of a background and you know, like I shot for myself, right. Um, so, uh, but because it was, the experience was good. I was really, I think I was really naturally good at it.
you know, because also there’s also people skills involved in this. A lot of people skills required, right? Because you need to manage obviously the bridegroom, but also parents and family and blah, a lot of stuff does happen. So it just came very naturally. So I said, why not, you know, continue that? And it wasn’t really difficult to get projects, honestly. So once we started marketing ourselves on the social media channels, we started really, I mean, I guess the work or whatever it is,
And my background is marketing so for me finding projects was not really not really difficult
Vineet
So let’s start with first the skill part. You were a landscape photographer primarily from what I remember. What skills did you feel you needed to gain? Because weddings involve landscapes in the sense of you’re showing settings, right? You’re showing different settings and of course, portraits. And portraits in a very candid way. What skills did you feel you needed to gain and were you correct on that assessment?
Nike
Mmm.
Vineet
when you did the first few endings.
Nike
Yeah, so I think that to get a lot of skills, I think the first I would say, like I said, people skills. And I actually I did weddings across India. So all the way from Shimla to Kerala, right? So literally through the entire length of India. So obviously again different customs, different sets of people, expectations are different. So there is a lot of that nuance that you have to
learn if you want to really, you know, go all India or, you know, go wider into your audience. But even in, even if you take one state or, you know, one city, different communities, different people, so there’s, there’s a lot happening here. So there’s a lot of people’s skills involved. I think that’s the first thing. And yeah, generally talking to younger people is, is okay, but there are again parents involved, there are uncles involved, right? So
That is a skill that I had to kind of hone a lot more. Second, the landscapes to portrait. This is all very much portrait. There’s expectations very, very high in terms of how beautiful the couple looks, but also how creative your shots are. You know, how wacky, how, and again, in the social media age, you have to stand out. You have to be different. So you really need to.
think through different scenarios or make ways of making it look cool or interesting. So that is a different skill altogether. And landscapes, I mean, the challenges are very, very different here, right? So that’s the and you need to impress here, actually. You need to impress a lot of people. So there’s that there’s that pressure added. So that’s another skill. So you need to plan shots and stuff. So there is candid. But yeah, you need to really get candid shots, candid shot, but also planned. And, you know, like these kind of.
shots that can go wacky or viral or that kind of stuff. So that is the second skill I had to learn in terms of generally and landscapes don’t require a lot of lighting, right? You really don’t have to plan for lighting, because obviously natural light mostly. But in this case, because people in portrait and very different conditions, you know, in at homes and in parks and outdoors, indoors,
Nike
different lighting conditions, you need to be very good at your lighting. And if you’re willing to get the great shots, you have to improve your lighting skills.
Vineet
Yeah, so there’s this running joke. So I’ve known Prashant now for 20 years and we had this whole phase where we would get on a any kind of video call and he’s going to be criticizing everyone’s lighting. Yes, so we know now, now we know where he got that from. Yes. So lighting is there. Portrait photography skills, people skills for sure. Now, editing. How is the editing pro- and of course we’ll get into the whole team management because this is a effectively this is also project management.
Nike
Yes.
Nike
Mmm. Oh yes. Oh yeah, I didn’t come for that.
Vineet
as much as a creative endeavour. But editing, like what changed in your edits from landscape? Like one is just okay, portrait photography I need to get good at. But otherwise, how did your life change?
Nike
Yeah. No, actually there’s many skills that I really missed, you know, so editing, of course, is a meme that you would see what photographers do, what people think photographers do. But literally 80% of the time is editing and rest is everything else put together. Right. So there’s editing. There is marketing. Right. There is post, which is again delivery of your this thing. So that means there’s.
That is your manager to manage your clients and manage delivery. So which is operations sort of thing. Right. Sales and marketing skills you have to learn which is again my background. So I didn’t have to learn it. But anybody who’s not from this background you really have to learn the skills as well. So yes I think it’s a it’s a full business that you’re running and you’re the business owner. So you have to be sales operations marketing you know all of this have you have to learn.
those and maybe you could outsource some of it but I guess all of these skills you need to really learn. Yeah, so editing coming to editing that is I would say my was my biggest challenge and I think it would be a big challenge for anybody who’s in this business because when you start out you are obviously outsourcing this work especially the video editing part because it requires meticulous and long hours.
You won’t be able to go for shoots if you’re sitting and editing all of those videos, right? So especially video editing, but for even for photo editing, making albums and stuff like that, you have to outsource, you have to depend on people for that outcome. And that can be extremely challenging because those are not employees that you’re, you know, working with those outsource partners. And yeah, that is so.
That was probably my biggest challenge and also the main reason why I decided not to pursue it further.
Vineet
That was why you decided editing is what made you give up is what made you not pursue this further. That’s we’ll come back to that. Let’s get into the business part. So there is because this seems like a bigger challenge because a photographer who wants to get into the wedding side, he’s probably got some portrait photography skills that he needs to improve, but he probably has a roadmap on how to improve them. But a wedding is a project.
What are the various elements and it’s… Do you feel it’s gotten more and more complex over the years? In the age of social media? This is also needed, this is also needed, wedding pre-shoot… Pre-wedding shoot rather… Has it gotten more complex over the years or were the challenges just different?
Nike
No, no, no. I think it’s become more common and therefore I think it’s become more like… I would say everybody does it. It’s become more commonplace. It’s become more easier, I think, because you know that everybody expects this or wants this or, you know, has this expectation. So, at least back then when I started, only the really high-end weddings would have, you know, like pre-wedding shoots.
Right. Or a location shoot or yeah, even for from a video point of view, we had a candid video. Right. Now every wedding, you have to do this. There’s no there’s no escape. And we can get what you call a candid video. I was a short form video, the trailer video, the teaser video, the same, the date video. Right. All of those. So so we basically.
Vineet
What is the candidate video?
Nike
Yeah, this is not common place for all weddings. And in fact sometimes we used to, you know, ask them, would you want this and they were like, what exactly is it? Like many of them won’t even know it. So right now, everybody expects, everybody wants, right? So it’s become common place and it’s, I don’t think it’s become complex. But yeah, the number of things that you’re doing has increased, but at the same time, also I think because of the amount of photographers that are out there,
I think even the market not as strong market is grown, but the number of photographers out there has also grown. So I think in that sense, the value of each wedding or the price point has reduced. So you are doing a lot more for us for a price point that is much lower than a few couple of years ago. So that way I think it has become challenging. Definitely.
Vineet
because the expectations have risen and because competition has also increased I’m guessing.
Nike
Yes.
Nike
and therefore, even like I said, even for smaller projects, and I would define smaller as anything probably less than one lakh for a wedding, you were expected to do all of these elements. And yeah.
Vineet
How does that work to them? Because if there are these like drone be expected a Multiple videos happening so you And I always operate in the assumption that nobody is a great photographer and a great videographer too They’re separate people. So you need to work with someone
Nike
So that’s it for today’s video.
Nike
Yeah, so we.
Nike
Mm.
Yeah, so what happened, what’s happening these days is when you offer a pack and this is again not these what happens is that we offer a package, right? So in a package you X you have like, you know, one really good what we used to call candid photographer, right? So, so one kind of pro photographer and maybe two very average. You know, like point and shoot kind of on the tripod you get, get your whatever.
get your coverage kind of shots, you know, right? So you’re not missing any events or any big things. So those two, when you pay them, and those are mostly also probably be outsourced, right? You pay them, let’s say 5K for the, for the day or some X amount per day. And then you get a drone. Drone is not required for the whole day. Drone is required for maybe five shots. You just say for this five shots, you know, come for one hour, shoot this and go.
or a lot of photographers they own their drones. So for them it’s anyway, you know, anyway that they are carrying that equipment with them. Right? And sometimes they obviously also give out drones for other weddings. So this like say, oh, the drone is mine. So I’ll just use it for half an hour or one hour. And that’s it. So that’s how people are managing. So even on a one lot project, I would say it’s still be making about 30% on it.
Vineet
That’s not bad. And how many days would this one lakh rupee project totally involve as the business owner for you?
Nike
Yeah. Again, again, back in those days, even like a five lakh project is when you expect that it is a three to four days shoot. Now, even for a very small wedding, you are like three days. Yeah, there is, you know, all sorts of rituals and also Sangeet. Even in South India now, all right, if you go to Kerala, also they’ll do Sangeet where Sangeet didn’t exist as a concept earlier. Right.
So they’re adding more and more days. But you break it down, especially during wedding season, you break it down into half a day. So when did Sangeet obviously happens, let’s say half day. So half day you are somewhere else shooting, let’s say the daytime of the wedding, let’s say Mehendi or whatever. And you are night, you’re in another wedding doing Sangeet, right? Or for the same wedding Sangeet, right? So you basically
doing two different things or two different events on the same day or two different weddings in fact, right? You could go to one Mehendi for one wedding in the morning and Sangeet for another wedding. So yeah, that way I think they are obviously they overwork during this period. But I think that’s how the market has kind of evolved now. Right. So there’s a lot of events but because there are also so many weddings that happen they manage it through
doing multiple weddings on the same day.
Vineet
So, and this is a question that obviously keeps popping up like in our own business also Pricing, how do you value services that you offer? One is of course, one client has a budget of one lakh Upti ke I’ll adjust services and make my cost like 70,000 The second client has a budget of 5 lakhs Obviously I’m not spending the same 70k, I’m spending more How much more and how did you differentiate the kind of services?
Nike
Yeah.
Vineet
you would be offering to different clients and how would you communicate that to the client to set expectations properly?
Nike
Yeah. So I think we would do it per day. How many days of events and mostly, mostly I think any big reasonably big event, a wedding would have about three days minimum, right? And the number of people required. So we would I would actually be a little bit extra careful would always take more people with me. Like say.
any project I would have about five, five plus logistics and operations and that kind of people. So seven, five to seven people, uh, with the lean, like in some time I would say why probably it could have been leaner, but just to get a lot, just so that we don’t miss out on anything. Because my greatest fear would be that, Oh, we missed out on some event or something, uh, because lack of people, right. And therefore it, um,
you know, and that kind of the honestly the couple doesn’t really doesn’t care about the parents would have an issue if you miss out on such or something, some ritual, some event or something like that. Right. So for that reason, but yeah, it’s number of days, the number of people you’re involving. I think that would be your this thing. What what I’ve seen happening is we don’t take into account like things like maintenance or
Upgrading your camera, you know all of those stuff. So you’re still making some X percentage on this project but you have to start you have to also You know bring in cost of maintenance or you know, like obviously there are Accidents that happen that you break a lens you break a tripod. Sometimes you’ve obviously damaged the camera altogether More than that on a regular basis. You have to upgrade your camera, right?
those days Nikon and the cannons were ruling the roost. Now I think it’s more Sony and the mirrorless and you know those mirrorless have come in both for photography and film. So these are people who are constantly upgrading. So I know, you know, like my friends from those days who are like every two years, in fact, every year back then, I think when Sony was releasing like
Nike
cameras every year a major upgrade that they would release and these guys have to go out because you know the clients are expecting a 4k video at 120 fps right which only the latest one would offer then because they went like we need slow motion at 4k.
Vineet
so then you have to go out and buy an A7S3
Nike
buy an a7s3 and you are spending what 3 lakhs right so imagine giving out your old camera which is still just one year old and now and you bought it for 2.5 or 2 lakhs now you are again maybe sold it off for 1.5 and now you are putting another one point so you are spending a lot of that and then there is maintenance there is you know damages and all that stuff so that is where I think a lot of people really lose money that’s a part they are kind of not calculating in their
you know, pricing stuff. I think I know people who have struggled because of that. They will be like, where is all my money gone? Right? I’m like, don’t you have like 10 lakhs worth of, 10 lakhs? Smaller photographs would have 10, 12, 15 lakhs worth of camera gear, right? Two cameras, three lenses or four lenses, two, one or two tripods, one drone, that’s it. 12 lakhs, 15 lakhs, right? So, yeah.
Vineet
And is rental an option or just adds up to the cost too much?
Nike
No, no, no rental is an option and that’s actually where a lot of people just say when this when they when they say the secondary camera guy the third camera guy they actually Rent it but they also rent it saying you come with the camera, right? So those guys would be like photographers will be like basic guys, but they’ll come with the camera They’ll shoot and they’ll you know, so they charge let’s say 10k You know 8k or 10k for a camera and then they’ll shoot and give you the footage and go away. So that’s That’s where I think yeah
You don’t necessarily have to own everything. But there are people who choose to own it and that’s where they lose a lot of… They invest a lot of money and therefore I think it causes… They do not have anything left in the end of the year. But yeah, I think that’s where the challenges are in terms of pricing something. You would think that one lakh is good because you’re still making 30,000 in let’s say three days. That’s not bad.
right for a three day work. But there’s all of these things that are not being included in that price, right.
Vineet
Yeah, which is where the business running skills come in and it seems like multiple trends, right? One is it seems like a wedding is more of an event. So therefore you need more business skills than any other kind of photographer would. But the second is become like being a photographer or being a photographer as a career option is getting more and more difficult because stock footage is becoming
Photography is becoming more ubiquitous. Video is one thing, but for photographers, earning a decent living. More and more when I talk to photographers, it seems like wedding photography is the one area where they just converge. That this is still a reasonable place to live a decent life. And do what we love. Of course, a lot of them don’t actually enjoy wedding photography. They see wedding photography as a way to finance their hobby photography. But…
Nike
Yeah.
Vineet
Like what do you see this? So one is videography still is increasing, but like where do you see photography heading?
Nike
Yeah, so see the other area where I really tried to make kind of a living was stock, right? And I think I had a reasonable, I mean, and I was like, people just say, hey, have thousands and thousands of photos out there. You’ll make it. It will happen. Right. So two things happen. One is for photographers worldwide. This is their.
for a lot of them this was the only way to kind of make a living right the stock. So and then because of that platforms like I would not want to name them but platforms would charge pay them less and less and less commission. So I would say probably what started as a 30 percent commission would go down to I think now it’s what 10 and now nobody cares because even the 10 percent there’s you know a lot of conditions.
Vineet
Yeah.
Nike
involved so you sell something and you’re probably making 20 bucks 20 dollars on it and I did sell a couple of them like in two months maybe two of my this stock images got sold or licensed but I would make what 40 dollars right so how is that a living anyway so because
Vineet
That seems like a very high figure now going by the photographers we’ve been speaking to.
Nike
Yeah, now it’s much lesser. Now I would say for those two probably I’ll make $0.02 or $0.05. So yeah, exactly. So because of that, I think, and then now with generative AI and the images that you can produce using prompt engineering, because of that, generally I think stock related stuff is going to go down further.
Vineet
Yeah, that seems more obvious than you know.
Nike
and it’s going to become fully commoditized, if it’s not already commoditized. But I would say that for photographers, especially in India, and I think there are platforms like 500px which opened, you know, and which is, which was with a lot of fanfare. They, that was a platform for photographers to showcase their portfolio, right? And then use that to again, license their images. And they had, they said they’re better than them because it’s
built by photographers and stuff right they’re struggling they are struggling they said they would give what 50 commission 40 commission for these photographers i think i don’t think their platform gets so much traction anyway so yeah because of generative ai stuff i think even whatever path some of them had is going to you know like reduce now or cut down now
So, especially in India, I think wedding people see it as a very clear path. If you are a photographer, you know, go to wedding shoots, you will make some. And they will say, you have friends and you know people. So just shooting them and make five, do five weddings in a year and you will make what, five, four, five lakhs. Right. So better than working for a job in a call center or that’s also happening. Right. So, yeah. So I think.
That is the only way, but if you really want to make it, there are few, obviously there are few people outside the cream. They’ve marketed themselves very, very well. They’ve established themselves. They’re making, still making good, good income from, from just wedding photography.
Vineet
That’s fairly natural across creative industries, right? Like a few names become brands and especially then on Instagram, like it becomes a talking point that I got this guy as my wedding photographer slash videographer. Yeah. So, so there is what, what all goes into the pre-production planning for a wedding.
Nike
Yeah. We’ll make it big.
Nike
Yeah. Yes.
Nike
Yeah, I think firstly because by the time you probably do about 10 weddings, you walk in and you know exactly what to shoot, where to shoot. You know, like it’s pretty easy to go through a day. It’s a tough, long, obviously physically challenging sort of day. But from an execution, from a creative point of view, I don’t think it will remain challenging after a point.
But the planning would be mostly logistics. If you’re really traveling across, from obviously not in the same city, but across India, you’re going around. So logistics planning. And probably that’s it. Because I would say once we have a team, and we know this is a wedding that involves X number of events, then you’re really, yeah.
Go and shoot. Go and shoot. That’s it. There’s no real planning, pre-production required. You know, what to do, this events, how to get the shots, you know, like, yeah, people are happy. But what they post on Instagram is just those one or two or, you know, like maybe five shots from their wedding. Those five shots you really probably have to, um, think through as well as, obviously you’ll see the location. You’ll see, you know, you’ll see how, um,
how the couple, how their equation is, the location, what can we do, interesting stuff. And there is some planning involved there. Actually, there’s a lot of planning involved in pre-wedding shoots, right? Because a lot of them now are location specific, so they go to Dubai, or they go to, in fact, New York, and like Europe and France, and shoot those. So I think that’s even there, I would say.
There’s a little bit of learning with the client in the sense that what is your expectation, right? What do you want? And I think most clients which is in this case, you’d be only talking to the couple they have Probably five short photos that show you and say this is the type I want right? So That’s it. I think that is a pretty Even in terms of pre wedding shoot, which is the video that you trailer or whatever you want to create Yeah, they’ll share some references and this is
Nike
what they want. So most people, especially brides, they know exactly what they want. So they’ll share those references and you plan for that. So I think this is very limited pre-production planning where it’s mostly go there and get the shot.
Vineet
And now on the career side, let’s say I’m starting out. I have done landscape, I’m good at portraits. I want to get into wedding photography. So one is basically interning or assisting someone who’s already established. Second is since there are many more people involved, there’s a videographer involved. Right. Do you go to the event, the wedding event planner and say, look, I’m a photographer.
Nike
Hmm.
Vineet
Or even in fact, or even a videographer or like who leads this discussion with the client or do clients typically end up going, I need a wedding event planner and I need a photographer slash videographer separate or how does it work? The marketing part.
Nike
Yeah, no, no. Wedding planner comes only for really, really big, big weddings, right? For the rest, I think most of them, I think now it’s only social media channels, most of them, and they will see their friends post something and say, who’s, who’s your guy? I want, you know, I want them to shoot that. I think that’s primarily the biggest channel. But also Insta and social media, Facebook marketing. I think if you
market them, market well identify your target audience well I think you have a reasonable chance of getting leads through that but now I think it’s everybody I think all their every photographers channel looks the same to me like there is nothing everything looks the same right everything looks the same because now it’s like everybody is just copying each other or you know they’re just like doing the same shots right
Vineet
It does. Like.
Nike
overproduced stuff, whatever it is, everything looks the same. So, if you shoot 10 videos, probably you will cover every type of shot and you have a portfolio as good as anybody else’s, literally. So maybe yes, the right path for you is probably just go join somebody who’s already doing this work and say I will come and they would need, they would need people to come for a day and shoot and give. So if you are reasonable, like…
reasonable enough you can get into any weddings for a day and go shoot and come back. So, actually even today if I want to say I want to just go shoot I don’t have to get a wedding for myself. I just tell, I just you know, know people in this industry and say hey do you need me to come for a day and shoot and they would say yes you come for, because of my whatever experience or caliber they will say oh you come for that you know the main shoot with the.
bride and groom like you get the get me the candid shots and probably they’ll pay me X rupees per day and that’s it. So you can or even a beginner can go say I’ll come and I’ll do the background you know like the other events and this is not the main photos but this is like the rest of the stuff you know so you can start there. I think that’s the I think once you have that then I think it’s also about your and then you build your portfolio right so you build your
Again, you start with your own friends, family, do their weddings, right? You’ll obviously get into those weddings easier. So but I would say, yeah, interning somewhere is a very, very good way of getting into this business.
Vineet
And at least knowing these, okay, these are the 10 basic shots that I need. These are the events.
Nike
Oh yeah, yeah. Because once, like I said, once you do 10 weddings, you will be, you’ll pretty much know what to do. You will not struggle with what to shoot and how to do. But of course there is like those skills of talking people management, talking to the, you know, getting them comfortable. All the stuff is also there.
Vineet
Okay, so Prashanth’s battery ran out towards the end of that, but I think that was a great discussion. I learnt a lot, so now I’m scared of weddings, probably for the rest of my life. Thanks for tuning in. If you have any questions for Prashanth, do let us know, drop in a comment. And of course, we are on Spotify, we’re on YouTube, we’re on Insta. You can reach us wherever, individual.in. And let us know what you thought. Cheers and see you next week. Bye bye.
