The Photo Lab: The Best Part Might Be Happening in the Corner

Devansh Rangani was working in banking when he started shooting weddings on weekends, just to see where it went. 

Harsh Mehta, a college underclassman he'd bonded with over a shared love of photography and people-watching, joined him two years later after deciding the traditional corporate track wasn't where he saw himself either. Eight years on, the two of them run The Photo Lab out of Mumbai, shooting 30 to 35 weddings a year across India and well beyond it - Spain, Italy, France, Portugal, Thailand, Dubai, Morocco, and Canada among them.

The Photo Lab Started on Weekends

"Our story started during our college years. Devansh was a senior and Harsh was a junior, and somewhere along the way we found a shared love for photography, people, and simply observing the little moments around us. Devansh started The Photo Lab as a weekend project in 2017 while working in banking. What started as something he did alongside his job slowly became something he wanted to pursue full time, and in 2018 he took the leap. Harsh joined him as a co-founder in 2019, after realising that the traditional corporate path was not really where he saw himself."

The approach itself hasn't changed much since those early weekends.

Even today, our approach remains quite simple. We believe weddings are not just about the big moments, but also about everything that happens in between,

they note. 

The laughter, the nerves, the chaos, the quiet moments with family and all the little things that people may not notice in the moment. For us, photography has always been about people and the stories they carry.

“I Had Completely Forgotten This Happened”

Ask Devansh and Harsh what they enjoy most about the work, and it isn't the big staged moments. 

What we enjoy most is the people. Every wedding introduces us to a completely different set of personalities, families, and stories, and we get to be around people during some of the most meaningful days of their lives.

The unpredictability is part of the appeal. "We love the fact that we never really know what the day is going to give us. Sometimes it is a big, emotional moment and sometimes it is something as simple as a parent looking at their child, friends laughing in a corner or a small interaction that nobody else noticed."

What makes it worth chasing, they explain, is a reaction they hear often, years after delivering a gallery. 

"Being able to notice them, photograph them, and years later have someone tell us, 'I had completely forgotten this happened,' is probably the most rewarding part of what we do," they reflect.

A Small Calendar Across a Very Large Map

"We are based out of Mumbai, India, and we primarily operate in India," they note, though their portfolio stretches considerably further. 

"We have shot weddings in Spain, Italy, France, Portugal, Thailand, Dubai, Morocco, Canada, Goa, Rajasthan, Kerala," they list - and they're available worldwide beyond that. Within all of that range, the studio still caps itself at "20-25 weddings a year," keeping the number deliberately manageable.

A 950-Year-Old Church and a Cabin in British Columbia

Asked for their most unforgettable wedding location, Devansh and Harsh don't pick just one. "There is not one but two," they say. The first: "Montgeroult, France - we shot a French x Indian wedding at Église Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption de Montgeroult, a 950-year-old church."

The second couldn't be more different in character. "Bluevault Pemberton, British Columbia, Canada - the 135-acre property with a beautiful cabin."

Love Keeps Changing Shape

After years of photographing weddings, Devansh and Harsh say familiarity never quite sets in. "It is the people, the couples and their stories that keep inspiring us," they reflect. 

After photographing so many weddings, you might think that things start to feel familiar, but every couple reminds us that love can look so different from one person to another.

That variation, to them, points at something bigger. "We are fascinated by the idea that love is one of those things that somehow exists beyond time and space," they say. "There is always another story to discover, another relationship to understand and another way of seeing love."

Asked which single wedding has stayed with them most, they're upfront that the question doesn't really have one answer for them - every wedding, in its own way, has become part of their own story too. What matters more to them than any individual day is the standard they hold their work to. 

"We never want our work to be about making a wedding look a certain way. For us, it has always been about making people remember how it actually felt. The way your mother looked at you, your friends laughing uncontrollably, your father holding back a tear, or a quiet moment between two people that nobody else noticed. That is what we are drawn to."