It was 2010 and social media had already started making inroads in people's lives. My parents bought me a DSLR and I started clicking pictures of my friends through it. Around the same time, candid photography was also gaining fanfare. I was introduced to wedding photography by a friend who asked me to do candid photography at her cousin’s wedding. I grabbed the opportunity and was surprised that they liked the results. My name started spreading through word of mouth. I enjoy the vibe of weddings as they are a mix of almost every genre in photography. My parents were a little skeptical about me making a career in photography as, during that time, there were not many women in the industry. But now they are very happy that I’ve chosen photography. Photography has also helped me evolve as a person on so many levels.
Earlier, I used to do photography as Harsheen J photography and as time passed, it started getting difficult to manage everything on my own. That's when I realized that I should have a team and that’s how Ombre by HJ was born. Things are now going quite smoothly as we are a team that has each other's back.
Weddings can be very unpredictable no matter how many times you have interacted with the clients. Things can be very different when you reach the venue. We take small notes of every small thing like how the couple vibe, what songs they enjoy etc. That becomes the base of our wedding films.
There are different kinds of clients. Some want everything customized and give us a lot of creative freedom. Some of them want things that are trending on social media which sort of creates a barrier to our creative freedom but either way, a bride is a bride and a groom is a groom. We give our best to make their, once in a lifetime, event memorable.
Celebrity shoots are such a good experience but at the same time there is a huge challenge of time. We need to pre-plan a lot to get everything right. Even at regular weddings, pre-planning helps a lot. Team Coordination plays a very important role. We divide our area of work and it helps us avoid our presence in anyone else’s frame.
Over the last decade, I have come across a bunch of interesting clients with whom we shared a lot of memories and I’m looking forward to having more and more in the future.
I think being a woman in the industry is not as challenging as people think it is. It is all in the mind. All that fear of being a woman makes it only harder than it really is. Honestly, as long as you are passionate and work hard, your gender doesn’t affect your career at all.
- Harsheen Jammu
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