Washington DC Wedding Photographer | Ben Rasmussen Photography

About a week after I shot the Simpson family, their son Scott and I went to Historic Occoquan to shoot his senior portraits. Occoquan is this cute little town right here in Woodbridge, VA. It's filled with art shops and craft stores and that sort of thing. But, it also has a bunch of cool textures and alleys that were the real reason we went there. A few of my favorites are below; you can see more on my flickr stream.



That last one was shot near some sort of waste pipe at the water treatment facility that's tucked away behind Occoquan (you can just see where we were in this shot I took on another senior portrait shoot I did in Occoquan--the water's a lot higher here, though).

Anyone who was looking on would've thought I was insane--I had the camera in my right hand and a flash on a six-foot light stand in the other hand. I mainly had the light stand pressed into my side for leverage, but moved it around to change the lighting, sometimes holding it over my head or over to the right side. All the while, we were perched on small dry patches of otherwise pretty slick rocks. It was pretty precarious, but I'm pleased with how the shots came out. Also, I've long since accepted, that I'll probably end up dirty and in some sort of precarious position (climbing over rocks, hanging off a bridge, lying in the street, etc.) on a photo shoot. Actually, I quite enjoy doing whatever it takes to get the photo--I'm always proudest of the shots I really had to work for.

One last thing: while we were shooting in an alley, I jokingly mentioned to Scott that we could get some shots of him scaling the walls. Right then a lady and her son walked by and heard the comment. She mentioned that her son could do that and he did! Here's a quick shot I took of him doing so:



Of course, to get that angle, I had to lie down in the street with Scott and the mom watching out for cars...