A decade behind the lens.
Self-taught. Tech-shaped. Story-driven. The studio behind 150+ weddings, films, and commercial frames since 2015.
Hello — I'm Pankkaj.
I didn't start in photography. I started in tech — as a support engineer, troubleshooting other people's problems for a living. Cameras were a side fascination. Frames were something I noticed in films and slowly began to copy on weekends.
Somewhere between fixing one more login bug and editing one more friend's pre-wedding photos, the side fascination became the louder voice. In 2015, I made it the only voice. Chitrakatha was born — चित्र meaning image, कथा meaning story. A small studio built around the simple idea that a wedding day deserves more than a checklist of group photos.
Ten years and 150+ weddings later, I still shoot every wedding I take on — alongside a small core team of photographers, cinematographers, and editors I've worked with for years. We're boutique by choice. Not because we can't take more, but because we'd rather give every couple the attention their story deserves.
My tech background still shows up — in the way we colour-grade, the way we back up files redundantly the moment we leave a shoot, in our delivery timelines. But behind it all is something simpler: a love for the way light hits a face when something true is happening.
Most of what we do is hold space for that moment. The rest is craft.
Let's talk about your dayThree things we hold to.
Quiet on the day
Your wedding is not a photoshoot — it's a wedding. We move quietly, ask very little, and let the day be the day. The best frames come when no one is performing for the camera.
Edit like cinema
Every photo gets touched. Colour, mood, light — we grade frames the way films are graded, so your album feels like a body of work, not a folder of files. Films are scored, paced, and cut with the same care.
Deliver when we promised
Sneak peeks within a week. Full gallery in 4–6 weeks. Wedding film in 8–10. We've never missed a delivery date in ten years. The tech engineer in me won't allow it.
What it looks like, start to finish.
The first conversation
You reach out via the inquiry form, WhatsApp, or email. We reply within 48 hours with a short discovery call (15 min on Zoom or phone). No pitch deck, no pressure — just a way for both of us to feel whether this is the right fit.
Custom proposal & package
Within a week of the call, you receive a tailored proposal — number of days, team size, deliverables, investment. We work with three core packages but most weddings end up customised. Once signed and a retainer is in, your date is yours.
Pre-wedding planning
2–3 weeks before the wedding we sit down (in person if you're in Mumbai/Nashik/Pune, video call otherwise) and walk through every event, every location, every person we need to know about. We build a shooting schedule so we're not improvising on the day.
The wedding day(s)
Our team arrives early, blends in, and stays through every event you've booked us for. We don't pose you for the first 30 minutes; we observe. Then, between ceremonies, we'll grab you and your partner for the 10–15 minutes of intentional portraits that become the photos on your living room wall.
Sneak peeks within a week
We send 30–50 lightly-edited frames within 7 days — for your social, for your families, for the high you'll be on right after the wedding. The full gallery and film come later, but you'll have something beautiful to share immediately.
Full delivery & album consult
Final gallery in 4–6 weeks. Wedding film in 8–10. Album design (if booked) follows after you've lived with the gallery for a few weeks — once you know which photos mean the most. Everything delivered via private online gallery you can share, download, and print from.
A boutique studio by numbers. The kind of metrics we earned slowly — one story at a time.
The kit, briefly.
Our primary cameras are Canon mirrorless bodies. We shoot mostly with fast prime lenses — 35mm, 50mm, 85mm — because primes force you to move with the moment instead of zooming through it.
Films are shot on dedicated cinema cameras with cinema-grade lenses, gimbals, and on-set audio. We grade every project in DaVinci Resolve.
Everything we shoot gets backed up in triplicate before we leave the venue — two on-site copies and one in the cloud — because the only thing more expensive than redundant storage is the call you don't want to make to a couple.
- Photography · Canon R5, R6 bodies · 24-70mm, 35mm, 50mm, 85mm primes · Profoto B10 strobes
- Cinematography · Sony FX3, dedicated cinema lenses · DJI Ronin gimbals · Rode & Sennheiser audio
- Post · Lightroom, Photoshop, DaVinci Resolve · Calibrated colour-managed monitors
- Backup · Triple-redundant on-shoot · Encrypted cloud archive within 24 hours
Not a one-man show. By design.
I lead every shoot, but I don't do it alone. Behind every Chitrakatha wedding is a small core team of photographers, cinematographers, and editors I've worked with for years — people who know how I shoot, anticipate the next moment, and care about the work the way I do.
We stay small on purpose. Anyone on a Chitrakatha shoot is either me, or has been hand-picked, trained, and trusted over many seasons. No second-stringers. No agency sub-contractors. Just a tight crew that's done this together long enough to feel like one camera with many eyes.
Hire the teamTell us your story.
If anything you read here resonated — the way we work, what we hold to, the kind of stories we love telling — reach out. We reply to every inquiry within 48 hours, and we take on a limited number of weddings each year.