Ben Rasmussen Photography

As I mentioned in my last post, Neha & Kart were married in India a year & half ago. So, to celebrate with friends & family who couldn't make it to the ceremony, they threw a huge party a little over a week ago at the Galleria at Lafayette Centre in DC.

The day started at the hotel with Neha & Kart getting ready. Neha was going to be wearing traditional Indian jewelry and an absolutely beautiful traditional dress:


By comparison, Kart had it easy :


After that, we headed over to the Galleria where I grabbed some shots of the decorations. The florals were by Wicked Willow:


To give their friends & family who couldn't make it to India the whole experience, after being announced and entering down the dramatic staircase, Neha & Kart had a 'first dance' and a cake-cutting:


After a program featuring dancing and a few speeches, dinner was served and the guests were treated to slideshow featuring Neha & Kart. Afterwards, the dance floor opened and the place got pretty crazy, with basically everyone getting in on some dancing:


Well, dancing and some other craziness :


As usual, there are a couple more shots over on my flickr stream.

Congrats and thanks to Neha & Kart for letting me shoot their awesome party!

Neha & Kart got married in India a year & a half ago. On Saturday, they threw a huge (huge!) party for family & friends who couldn't attend the wedding. I'm currently working on the shots from the party and hope to blog some highlights tonight or tomorrow.

Early the day before the party, we met at the FDR Memorial in DC to shoot some portraits to display as guests entered the party. The idea was to incorporate the memorial's awesome waterfalls into some great portraits. But, as we learned to our dismay, the waterfalls aren't on at 7am. Yikes!

So, we made the best of it and spent a while shooting around various other features of the memorial and the nearby tidal basin overlooking the Washington Monument and Jefferson Memorial.

Neha and Kart were so fun and easy to shoot! They were very comfortable in front of the camera and had a lot of fun with the whole thing. Here are a few of my favorites from the first part of our shoot:



Just after we took this last shot, it had been about an hour and we had some great stuff. So, we decided to call it a day and I started packing up my gear. Promptly at 8, and right as I was about to zip up my camera backpack, we hear the waterfalls start. So, I pulled out the camera, we went to the big waterfall that commemorates FDR's fourth term and we shot several more portraits, including this one, my favorite of the day:



As always, there are few more shots in my flickr stream than are featured here on the blog, including a pretty funny shot of Kart goofing around.

I recently did several portrait sessions with the different members of the same family. The first session was with two of their daughters, Abigail and Natalie. Here are several shots from that session:


Watch for shots from the other two sessions to be posted next week!

If you've been here before, you've probably noticed that my blog is now my home page. If you've never been here before, don't worry, you're not missing anything. Previously, the site started with a splash page. I decided to get rid of that and bring people straight to what they're looking for: the photos!

Also, I'm hoping that having the blog as the homepage will force me to be more diligent at keeping it updated . With that in mind, I'll be posting some shots from three portraits sessions and a one-year anniversary party over the next week or two. So, check back soon, or just subscribe to the RSS feed (if you don't know about RSS, check out this vid--if you read a bunch of sites, you'll be glad you did!).

Enjoy the new, more efficient rasmussenphoto.com!

p.s. I've tested the site pretty thoroughly, but if you notice something that doesn't quite work, please leave me a comment or drop me an email and I'll fix it asap. Thanks!

I've neglected the blog once again--shocking, I know! Anyway, here's the full post that I promised for Chevonne and Joe's wedding.

Chevonne is a good friend of my little sister and someone I've known for years. So, I was really excited to be able to shoot their wedding. Their wedding was held at the Mount Vernon Inn, which is part of the actual Mount Vernon.

Chevonne and Joe have been together for quite a while and have four absolutely beautiful daughters. We got all of them together and took a few portraits in the gazebo of her parents' house:



One of them didn't quite make it to the ceremony:



Here's a few from the ceremony:



After taking the group shots, we took just a few with just Chevonne and Joe. This is my favorite:



And here's a couple from the reception. I love Chevonne's expression in the first one:



What wedding reception would be complete without the electric slide? The funny thing was that it was requested of the band, but only one or two people knew how to do it. The singer got out and taught them all how to do it, but it took them quite a while to get it. Everyone had a great time bumping into everyone else, though.



So, congratulations and thanks to Chevonne and Joe!