Want to tap into the booming world of multicultural weddings but worried you’re not “from” the community? Pat Miller sits down with multicultural wedding photography specialist Abhi Sarkar, who shares why cultural barriers are mostly a myth and how any talented photographer can open this exciting new market.

Episode Highlights 🎤💡:

(06:27) - Do you need to belong to a culture to photograph it?

(16:05) - How multicultural weddings differ from traditional weddings

(20:36) - How multicultural weddings connect to luxury work

Connect with Pat Miller ⬇

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Connect with Abhi Sarkar ⬇

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I'm Pat Miller and this is the Professional Photographer podcast. You're a wedding photographer and you shoot one kind of wedding and then you see someone's wedding list and they have all these different cultures and all of these different traditions and you think, boy, I'd love to do that but I can't. I'm not a member of those cultures. Today's guest, Abhi Sarkar is going to tell us if you're a wedding photographer, you're a wedding photographer. And he can help you get into the business of multicultural wedding photography. On today's show, he's going to tell us everything that we need to know. And he's teaching at Imaging USA to give you anything that he leaves out. Pricing, shot lists, expectations, everything. He'll even share how his first wedding was zombie themed. That's true story. We'll hear it in a minute. Abhi Sarkar is our guest. We'll talk to him next. Abhi, welcome to the show. It's so great to have you. How are things? Are you busy?

Yeah, you know, typical summer, a lot of last minute sessions at the studio and weekends are all weddings. So it's been good, it's been busy is always good at this time.

Yeah, busy is always good. It's a great time to be making some money in the summer is just, it's just awesome. If someone hasn't met you yet, you can explain why you're busy on the weekend. So tell them who you are and what you do.

So my name is Abhi Sarkar. I am based out of Philadelphia. I am a wedding photographer as well as I own a studio here in Fishtown, Philadelphia. I kind of specialize in multicultural weddings and in my studio. I do family portraits, branding, everything under the sun basically. And yeah, so that's what, that's what brings me here and that's what keeps me busy on weekends.

You have such an interesting background because some people pick up a camera from the first moment they know they want to be a photographer. But that's not how you started. Give us your backstory of how you ended up becoming a wedding and portrait photographer.

Yes. So yeah, it is a little bit of a winded journey. But this is about my fourth career, which kind of I fell in love with and I love being where I am right now. I grew up in India. I am a retired scientist as of now. So basically my graduate studies, my PhD is what brought me to the US back in 2012 during grad school, I had the privilege and pleasure of meeting the right people, being at the right events and I realized that I love being a business owner and I can make money and provide for my family by doing this. So during grad school I figured out my way around the industry. I was part time for the longest time. I was doing both research in a startup of my own after my PhD as well as doing weddings on the weekends. About three years ago I took the decision due to the great support from my wife as well that I should go full time. And hey, I love science, I can talk hours on science. I just didn't love the career path and I love being a business owner myself, being my own boss and creating stuff with my own time. So that's what made me go full time and that's where I am now.

We have a lot of folks that watch the show that are part time hoping to go full time. So what was that experience like to go from part time to full time? Photographer, has it suited you? Have you enjoyed it?

Enjoyed, yes. Suited? That depends on the day you ask me. So it's. It is. I never, I never want to say that there is a formula that you can follow to make that decision because this is very personal. As I mentioned, my wife was one of the biggest reasons why I could do this. She saw my, you know, she really believes in what I do, I believe in what I do and I'm passionate about it. Did I make the switch for money? Obviously not because I was making way more money in my science career. But I do really enjoy, I do know where I want to be, what I, what I want, where I want to reach. So that is, those are the things that if I'm telling this to someone who is thinking about this, obviously weigh out your risks and practical decisions as well. There are a lot of risks of going full time, but there are also a lot of rewards going full time. I'm already like, I'm over 40 years old, I didn't have the brain capacity anymore to juggle two things and trying to be good at both. And I prefer this way that I ventured into so many new things. I've gone into speaking as well and that's what brought me here as well. All this would not have been possible if I wasn't full time. So that's what I would say. Just weigh out what your priorities are, what your goals are, what would make you happy at the end of the day. Because it's usually not always money.

That's the truth for sure. And when you find it, it almost doesn't feel like work. I mean, it's working hard, but it feels a lot less like work than when you're doing something that doesn't fit you as well. We have had wedding photographers on the show before, but never someone in this niche of doing multicultural weddings. So what communities are you photographing?

So, of course, the South Asian communities is a big, big deal, but my clientele kind of is split into a 60, 40, or maybe 50, 50 at some times, depending on the year. But it's mixed with mixed couples, which basically means two different communities coming together, where one half could be South Asian, the other half has been a whole range of things, Chinese, Korean, Jewish. And it goes on that list like that. And then I also do traditional American weddings as well. So that's why I kind of term it all under the term multicultural, because I love. I always tell this to my clients as well. The love for travel is what got me into this business. While I can't. I don't physically travel, but I do travell through different cultural traditions and communities through this work. And I love always being surprised by something new that I see.

I think photographers would love the challenge to tackle a multicultural wedding, but some may think that they need to share that culture before they take photos of that culture. Is that true or not?

Absolutely not. Absolutely not. You have to have a mindset, but other than that, you don't need any prerequisites. For example, people often make this mistake, and this is a myth about my business as well, that, you know, because I grew up in India, I'm familiar with the things that I photograph. I will tell you this outright. In my 29 years that I lived in India, I grew up basically in eastern part of India and lived in the southern part of India as well. I haven't seen any of this over there. That, because when it comes to India specifically, and this is not true for every country, but when it comes to India specifically, if you travel a distance similar to from Philadelphia to New York City, if you travel the same distance in India, you might be traveling into a whole different community where the language, customs, wardrobe, food, everything is different. The same religion is practiced differently. Hinduism, being the religion all over, can be practiced very differently depending on where in India you are. So I hadn't seen any of what I photograph here on a regular basis ever in India. So that never helped. However, because I travel a lot, I move around a lot. I love doing that. I like the challenge of having something new all the time. Have a mindset of being flexible, which is kind of very, very important. In my opinion, even when you get into multicultural weddings, you don't have to. You don't have to know everything about what's going to happen. Because the best part is when different communities come together, especially in America, especially in America, they will create a new tradition, some, or do something differently. So there is no guide guidelines that they have to follow exactly in that sense. And some couples do completely traditional wedding. Some couples kind of pick and choose what traditions they want to follow. So you have to be flexible enough to be able to follow those things. Right. And that's the mindset. Flexibility is the biggest thing that I always ask of my team as well, that come ready to do and be able to adjust to anything, because it's not going to be the same flow in everybody.

Would it be smart to be a second shooter to break into this market or get in just by asking a lot of questions and being responsive to the client?

Well, yes, to both, actually. You can do both. And that obviously depends on your market as well, where you are, how responsive your clients are. My only advice is that be upfront. Be upfront and be transparent about that. If you want to feel confident yourself, the best way is to second shoot or even third shoot. Right, and as I said, it was pure luck. I met certain friends who are my great friends with me now. They had me tag along and I, you know, one underlying requirement is you have to be good at the photography part. So don't take that away, right? So keep that solid, keep your technique solid. But the, the rest of it, you can always ask someone and you can reach out to photographers, including myself in my area. If you reach out to me, if I have the opportunity and if I have the right fit, I don't mind if someone comes along and observes, learns. Of course, you carry yourself professionally and then you're good to learn like that. And that is one of the best way to get into it as well.

You have seen and shot it all, including your first wedding. I love this story. Tell us the story of your first wedding that you ever photographed.

This was even before I even considered being a wedding photographer. I've always been a photographer. Like anyone else in this industry, I've traveled a lot since my childhood thanks to my parents. And I've always photographed where I traveled. However, I never thought of being a wedding photographer because that was not on the horizon in India. However, when I first moved here, I spent a significant amount of time. I lived in South Jersey, right next to my campus. But every opportunity I would get to come to Philly which was literally a 20 minute train ride. I would do that because Philly has things happening and I come from a city which used to be at one point the second most densely populated city in the world, Calcutta. And so crowds, things happening, noise, that's my safe zone. Instead of the suburbs where I was living, where they sometimes no one's around and that's okay. So that's what brought me to the city during Easter one time. And till about COVID Philly has the tradition of doing a zombie crawl on Easter. That is fun there. But yeah, I'll not get into that. But so I was like, okay, this is new for me. I, I did not grow up in the Walking Dead era for when Walking Dead reached India and all, but so I didn't know much about that. So I was photographing that event and a proposal happened to happen during that, during that crawl to a great couple. They are very much into it and the proposal happened and I photographed that. So I ended up, this couple ended up reaching back to me through Facebook, through a common friend who knew me and was like, hey, do you want to photograph our wedding? Like, sure, let's try it. I mean, I like challenges, but the biggest challenge, what ended up happening was what they when they explained to me how the wedding is going to be. Because these two were really, really passionate about the whole culture, the zombie theme and everything. They were actually doing a wedding where a full on zombie attack was being reenacted. That was something that I was like, I didn't know how to react to that. And I was like, I don't know how to prepare for that either. But the one thing that stuck out to me was I love the passion they had because they are not doing anything half heartedly. They had professional makeup artists, they had professional, like not professional. They had fake blood, they enacted, they actually tore clothes and everything. And they had a good group of about, I would say 30, 32 people who were part of this whole zombie crawl - the zombie crowd rather attacking them. And this turned out to be the first ever wedding I photographed. The first ever American wedding, the first ever white dress wedding. All my firsts all jumbled into, together into one wedding. And it just, it was a great challenge for me and I, I loved it. There was nothing I could use, I could Even find on YouTube to prepare for it. So all I was doing was be ready to be in the middle of it and hopefully hope. What I was most concerned about is being able to meet the vision and expectations of the couple that they had. They were the sweetest couple back then, and I didn't want to disappoint them at any cost. So that's the biggest thing.

What a great story. And that's the challenge for a wedding photographer. You have a shoot list. You have expectations. The bride or the mother of the bride or whomever's calling the shots has told you, you got to get this, this, and this. But when you walk into a wedding that may have two different kinds of families with one another, two different sets of expectations, if flexibility is super important, how do you weigh flexibility against the shoot list that, you know, you've got to get these things? How do you balance those two things?

So that takes a little bit of time. I have made mistakes myself as well in the beginning. Like, you cannot appease everyone in that you come across, right. But your priority is the couple. And I, what I do now, and this is not from day one. This was after a few years of, you know, going through this. I always make that very clear to my couple, that I love interacting with everyone. No one will be offended. I can guarantee you that. The way I carry myself, the way my team carries themselves, however, my priority is what you guys won't have, because you are the ones who will walk away with these images later, and you are the ones who are going to look back at it at the same time. I'm never shooting down any requests or anything, but I will try to balance it out so that, you know, my main focus being the couple, everything that they wanted as their imagery or as what is important to them. And that could be something personal to them, you know, something personal to their story. I want to make sure that I deliver on that. Everything else that are coming in, if it's possible, I will always do it. I have no egos against it. I have no rules against it. In fact, that's one thing I'm known for, being able to accommodate everyone that's involved. But obviously, everyone has limits, and you should honor those limits and try to stick with that.

I heard you say as an aside before a white dress wedding, is that a way to describe what someone might call a traditional American wedding? Is that a way to say it?

I don't know. I must have come across it. I honestly cannot tell you if I actually read it somewhere or someone told me that. But I have come across this term just to, because, you know, we have Catholic weddings in Indian weddings as well. So just to differentiate between that and traditional American wedding. So there's no other way to say that. And Again, America means a mix of everything. So you know, you never know.

Exactly. That's where I was going. It's like, okay, wait a minute. All of these multiculturall weddings are also American weddings, which is great. But these other cultures, they have different expectations and different traditions. So how might, if we can just go with the term, permission to use the term white dress wedding, just so we know, you know, a wedding like this, how might a multicultural wedding and a traditional American wedding, if you call it that, how might they differ? How is it challenging you when you do a multicultural wedding? Like what's the difference between the two?

Mostly about the format, you know, it's like. So let's say, let's, let's say what we are calling a white dress wedding, a traditional American wedding. It's you get ready, go to the church or you go to the venue ceremony happens. If you're going to the church, it's a one hour, two hour ceremony. If you're going, if you're doing a non denominational, it's a half an hour ceremony followed by some pictures, reception done. When it comes to other communities and I'm going to expand beyond South Asian as well. South Asians can be multi day, but let's say you're doing a Chinese mix or a Vietnamese mix. There are some formats of ceremony that will be like plugged in. Like for example the Chinese tea ceremony or Koreans have the, I think it's called the Hanbok ceremony or and pardon my, I mean, I don't remember all the names but you know, so there. So you have to be ready to make time for that. At the same time you should be prepared to make sure your coverage or you make money, you know, or you design your packages so that it covers those variations, right? You, if you are just starting out, don't care about that. You want to get the work, the experience fair and good. I have done that, I've been there. But after that, once you are settled, if settled in your business and you want to design your business to make sure that it caters to everything, you have to be aware of this because sometimes you say 10 hours of coverage. Most traditional weddings means 10 hours, you start at noon, you finish at 10pm, that's 10 hours. Whereas when you do something that, let's say a South Asian wedding or a mixed wedding, which has a South Asian component, the day will be broken up from let's say 6am to 2pm and then there'll be a gap and then again the day will kick start off like at 5 or 6pm, go off till 11 or even later. So you have to be prepared for that to be able to accommodate that. How much you flex, that's up to you. How you design your business, I personally love that. I personally love covering everything. So I made sure that I design my packages in a way that will not only cover my profits, but also cover my expenses and, you know, make sure that I am building for most scenarios. I still have to customize in a lot of places, but I still build for most scenarios.

What about products that maybe other communities would buy that aren't sold by some wedding photographers or traditions that they expect a giant print? Do they expect this kind of look? Or what are some of the products that are sold on the back end as you're shooting a multicultural wedding that maybe someone hasn't sold before?

Yeah, so I contrary to most, from what I've heard from peers, that contrary to most, I started with wedding albums right from the beginning with the exception of that first zombie wedding. I gave them a usb. But yeah, side note, I actually gave them a little USB in a coffin because they loved it. They absolutely got it. They loved it. But anyways, I was always doing albums. The only difference is that sometimes you have to adjust for five days or five days are very rare these days, but maybe at least three days of events. When it comes to South Asian weddings now, do you package them all together in one book or you're trying to package them separate books for albums? As far as expectations go that I wouldn't say these are expectations, but I would say that these are opportunities that you can take, you know, make use of when it comes to multicultural weddings and the rest. I mean minimalism is also on the rise. So not always like selling wall art and all is not, not a big part of my business. But albums for sure, at least albums is helping.

Some of the multicultural weddings can get you right next to the luxury market, is that right?

Correct. Yes. It's just because of the visuals. I personally, this is again, I want to preface from what I say next is that I'm no expert. My experience is also limited compared to a lot of people in the industry. However, the word luxury can range in a lot of different directions. It could be the amount of investment a couple is making. I have short weddings where the couple has spent over 100 grands on just the decorations and. But that doesn't mean that makes me someone who gets half of that for what I do. I wish I would be there someday, but I'm not that category. But I still consider that as a luxury because the visuals that came from that wedding are some of the best that I've ever made. And because it involved production, it involved lighting, and everything looked just beyond what you're actually shooting. So. So that is what I would refer to as luxury. But those visuals do help you elevate your reach, elevate your market. And the rest obviously, comes down to business practices of how, who you network with, where you're more visible, your market, your own market. All those things can add up. But definitely that is the first step. When you do multicultural, you get visuals that are not traditional, that are not the same thing that every other photographer is producing, and that will definitely get you somewhere different from others.

I'm curious, shooting so many different faiths and communities, is there a tradition or a ceremony that you look forward to capturing? Because it always comes out with great images.

I love the haldiv. That's what we call in the South Asian ceremonies. It's usually the day before or the two days before the actual wedding ceremony involves the turmeric ritual. Basically, it's a ritual of. Which signifies purification of both the bride and the groom before they're going into a matrimony. And what it ends up happening is. And especially these days, traditionally you're supposed to do them separately in separate houses, like in the bride's house and the groom's house. But these days, most couples do it together. And all the friends get involved, young cousins get involved, and it's usually a big color fest. And, you know, and depending on the venue, depending on how the couple is, they are, they are lots of time, a lot of creativity is involved. But the visuals that come out of it are always so much fun. So much fun. And my personal shooting style is to be in the action rather than being far from it. So if you look through my portfolio also, you'll see most images will make you feel that you are standing right in there. I shoot wide. That's the reason I try to bring in the environment in. But, you know, when they. Sometimes the grooms, Friends of the groomsmen kind of physically tear open the groom's shirt and all that stuff while they're doing that. It's. It's all fun. It's all fun. And it's. But it makes great opportunities. And sometimes they involve swimming pools that the couple jumps into. That's even more fun. And I've even done. I think, yeah, I remember once photographing the ocean in Mexico. They just jumped into the ocean. So all that Kind of stuff, you know, when, where else will you be able to say that this, this is part of my work day.

Yeah. This is what I get to do for a living. And look at how these photos turn out.

Exactly.

That's great. Well, I'm sure there are people that are watching that want to know more about what you do. They want to get into this line of work. How do you teach people like where can they connect with you? How can they learn more?

So I've only recently gotten into sharing my experience and education and I've started a Facebook group called Clicks and Chai. So I did want to bring into, bring into it a little bit of my immigrant background as well. So that's why the chai part comes in. But the whole idea is to have an open forum for discussion. I do share a lot of tips and tricks in there. It's fairly new so people are joining in. But the whole idea of that group is that share your experiences, any things you learn on the way. I'm a big gearhead, so I talk a lot of different tools and things that I try and I find out they work really well. I will share those things in that group as well. It's on Facebook. You can find it by just searching that.

Qlik Senchai Sounds great. Are you speaking at Imaging USA this year?

Yes, I am. Hey, what are we going to be talking about? Yeah, I'm speaking in January at Imaging usa. I'm going to talk about this whole experience of how a bit of a myth busting about how you don't have to belong to that community but you can get into multicultural weddings. A few tips and strategies of how to do that and how to be more prepared in terms of not learning what happens, but being more open minded, flexible and represent with authority rather than just having the data about what happens in these things.

That's great. Well, we'll see you at Imaging USA. We'll definitely check out the Facebook group. And thank you so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate it.

My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of the Professional Photographer podcast. Now, if you watch this far into the episode, first of all, high five. Thank you. Appreciate you. Secondly, click like and leave a comment and tell us what did ABHI say that made you think and opened up opportunity for you and you'd like to learn more about then of course hit subscribe. That way next time we release an episode, it'll pop up in your feed. The other thing is if you're not yet a member of Professional Photographers of America, you're missing out. PPA offers incredible resources like equipment insurance, top notch education, and a supportive community of photographers ready to help you succeed. It's perfect for photographers who are serious about growing their business in a sustainable and profitable way. At PPA, you belong here. Discover more about membership at ppa.com. That's PPA.com. I'm Pat Miller, founder of the Small Business Owners Community and the host of the show. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you right here next time. Take care.