[ad_1]
Neeraj Bagga
Tribune press service
Amritsar, June 23
Big Punjabi weddings are a thing of the past, blame him for the pandemic. In the past, the budget for wedding photography was in crores in Amritsar, providing jobs for a large number of professionals, but now the profession has seen a marked slowdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic for the past year and a half. .
Restrictions imposed in the aftermath of Covid-19, such as not having more than 20 people at a wedding ceremony, not being able to travel by plane or train, made a big Punjabi wedding a pygmy affair .
There are hundreds of photo studios in the city for wedding photography. Almost 20 of them cater to high end weddings engaging them for Rs 2 lakh and more. So high-end stores hired 10-20 people to do the job efficiently. With the exception of a few, the majority of them laid off their staff.
Vijay Malhotra, who runs two photo studios in the city, said families who spent Rs 2 lakh and more on photography and filming for 10 days have now reduced it to one or two days. He said he pays his 15 employees salaries, but not all photo studios can afford it.
NRI weddings and people from agriculture once formed a large part of the clientele. Air travel restrictions reduced their arrival. A major embargo on no more than 20 people at the wedding also swept away the locals, who are now investing their money in gifts of gold ornaments and fixed deposits.
Previously, these families used to invest to request pre-wedding shoots, four-k quality cinematic shoots, equivalent to shooting a Bollywood movie. Straightforward photography was another genre in which people were clicked into their natural backgrounds without their prior warning.
Likewise, the 10-day wedding program has been reduced to a two-day affair. Previously, wedding celebrations started with a bracelet ceremony, a DJ or ladies sangeet party, then a bachelorette party, a mehandi shoot, a dress shoot, a salon or makeup session, a haircut. of ribbon, milni, sehrabandi, baraat, jai mala and phere, among others.
Rakeshwar Sharma, whose family has operated a photo studio in a prime commercial location, Crystal Chowk for more than five decades, said many families were hosting the wedding in one day. “No invoice amount now exceeds Rs 30,000. With that amount in hand, I cannot afford to keep the staff of seven. So they were all made redundant, ”he said. Each cameraman is equipped with top quality cameras costing Rs6lakh and more. With paltry liquidity, it is not economically viable to hire men and equipment.
[ad_2]
picture credit