Indian wedding photography
View allAll Photos Tagged anand
Except for the giant LCD screen and the lad with the cell phone, everything seems as it was there when the line was opened a century back.
"In this world we must help one another."
(Jean de la Fontaine - French fabulist and poet, 1621-1695)
Anand is wrapped in a silk scarf made with a hand embroidery.
This artcraft is done by ladies involved in several workshops that we have settled with GURIA, a Human Rights organisation fighting against the sexual exploitation of women and children, particularly those forced into prostitution and trafficking.
Each scarf is unique and made in sarees provided by many women in Benaras who take this opportunity to get rid of pieces that they brought in order to celebrate happy moments, festivals or parties.
Those accessories carry traces of happiness in their yarns...
Anand, our icon model, shows his body for the purpose of this brotherhood and happiness chain as this is a way to catch the attention on this fight for Human Rights and human dignity.
(Scarf style "Kingdom" - 100% silk - Collection RED HALO)
RED HALO is a collection of household linen based in Benaras (Varanasi - India) providing work to people who were living with difficulties and education to children.
"Like" the new RED HALO page on Facebook and join this amazing human adventure in Varanasi, www.facebook.com/redhalo.in
Join the photographer at www.facebook.com/laurent.goldstein.photography
© All photographs are copyrighted and all rights reserved.
Please do not use any photographs without permission (even for private use).
The use of any work without consent of the artist is PROHIBITED and will lead automatically to consequences.
Anand Karaj (Punjabi: ਅਨੰਦ ਕਾਰਜ, anand kāraj) is the Sikh marriage ceremony, meaning "Blissful Union" or "Joyful Union", that was introduced by Guru Amar Das. The four Lavan (marriage hymns which take place during the marriage ceremony) were composed by his successor, Guru Ram Das.
Punjabi wedding traditions and ceremonies are traditionally conducted in Punjabi and are a strong reflection of Punjabi culture.
The actual religious marriage ceremony - among Sikhs, the weddings are conducted in Punjabi; among Muslims, in Urdu; and among Hindus, in Sanskrit. There are commonalities in ritual, song, dance, food, and dress. The Punjabi wedding has many rituals and ceremonies that have evolved since traditional times, including many famous Punjabi dances.
Guests dancing at the Anand Karaj (Sikh wedding) of a friend of mine. Though totally broke at the time I was honoured to be able to serve as one of her photographers as my wedding gift. I hope the photos bring back happy memories for both of them for many years.
Long exposure taken with a Nikon D40 fitted with a Nikkor AFS DX 18-55mm F/3.5-5.6G II lens, mounted on a gorrilapod. Lighting with an on-camera SB600, bounced off the ceiling a couple of times during the duration of the shot. Image processed in Photoscape in part through the application of a cinema film-filter.
More of my photos can be found here.
Original filename: DSC_0166-1
Anand Varma never set out to become a photographer. At least, not at first. He was training to be a scientist—field biology, to be exact—and spent his early twenties trekking through cloud forests in Panama, patiently tracking parasitic birds and amphibians that whispered the secrets of evolution in their skin and feathers. But somewhere along the way, he realized that telling the story of those creatures—their struggles, their intricate lives, their astonishing beauty—moved him more deeply than collecting their data.
He picked up a camera not as a tool of art, but of communication. It quickly became both.
Today, Varma is one of the most singular visual storytellers of the natural world. His images, many published through his long collaboration with National Geographic, are not just beautiful. They are transformative. They show us the unseen—the sliver of time between a bee’s pupal sleep and its emergence into the light; the inside of a hummingbird egg as life begins to stir; the complex, alien architecture of the brain of an octopus. Through Varma’s lens, nature is neither quaint nor remote. It is intimate, strange, and breathtakingly alive.
I photographed Anand at WonderLab in Berkeley, where he had transformed a portion of the space into a kind of living studio—a hybrid between a laboratory, an art studio, and a cabinet of curiosity. A National Geographic film crew was there, quietly orbiting him as he adjusted a microscopic rig or repositioned a translucent insect under a halo of LEDs. There was a feeling in the room—a kind of reverence. Anand works with the precision of a scientist, the patience of a monk, and the sensibility of an artist. It’s rare to see someone so wholly in their element.
His background in science is not ornamental—it’s foundational. He earned a degree in integrative biology from UC Berkeley, and that early scientific training informs not just what he chooses to photograph, but how. He builds many of his own tools: custom lighting rigs, time-lapse systems, and high-speed setups that allow him to peer into timeframes our eyes were never meant to access. A single Varma image might require weeks or months of preparation—cultivating insect colonies, calibrating microscopes, rehearsing the choreography of emergence. But the result is not sterile. It’s magic.
What makes Anand’s work so moving is not just that it’s technically brilliant—it’s that it’s full of feeling. There’s a deep curiosity, even love, in his images. He treats each life form—whether it’s a parasite, a jellyfish, or a pollinator—with the same quiet reverence. It’s the kind of gaze you’d expect from a poet or a philosopher. He invites us to see these creatures not as “other,” but as fellow travelers, each of them navigating the same strange universe we are.
And he’s more than just an image-maker. He’s a bridge—between the scientific and the aesthetic, the seen and the unseen. He speaks about complexity with clarity, about biology with wonder. His TED talks, his essays, his collaborations with other scientists and artists—they’re all part of a larger project: to reconnect people with the hidden beauty and interconnectedness of the world around them.
In person, Anand is thoughtful and self-effacing. He listens more than he talks. There’s a quiet intensity to him, but also a calmness, as if he’s always slightly tuned in to a slower rhythm than the rest of us. A rhythm more in sync with metamorphosis, decay, and bloom.
It’s hard not to feel changed after spending time with his work. It makes the invisible visible. It slows you down. It stirs awe.
And perhaps that’s the point. In an age when attention is fractured and nature is under siege, Anand Varma offers us a different kind of vision—not just to look more closely, but to feel more deeply. To remember that the world is full of wonders, if only we have the patience to see them.
Zabriskie Point is a part of the Amargosa Range located east of Death Valley in Death Valley National Park in California, United States, noted for its erosional landscape. It is composed of sediments from Furnace Creek Lake, which dried up 5 million years ago—long before Death Valley came into existence.