It’s a new year, and love is already in the air. Today, I bring you an engagement ceremony for my friend Gourang and his beautiful bride to be, Shuchi. I’ve known Gourang from the undergrad days in college, through several mutual friends. He’s a smart guy, so naturally, he’s doing big things these days… like starting his own company and working for big shots like Adobe. I met up with him a few weeks ago, and he informed me that he was getting engaged to the perfect girl. He told me that he was fortunate enough to meet Shuchi, a speech pathologist from St. Louis, and she was definitely The One. Good news indeed! On top of that, he wanted me to cover the engagement ceremony, since you know… it’s sort of my specialty. Of course, being a good friend, I was happy to oblige. Long story short, we did a super quick outdoor session, and then covered the rest of the ceremony. Without further ado, I present you the images. Just a fair warning though, Shuchi has a killer smile… so view these images at your own risk! 😀
I’ve been away for a while, but like Bruce Willis in Die Hard, I’m coming back with a Vengeance. This session I’m about to share is EPIC in all it’s essence. I don’t usually say that here, but trust me, this shoot was on another level.
A long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away… I attended a little university called East Carolina. Back then, like every other South Asian kid, I was studying pre-med so that one day I could be an awesome doctor and save someone’s life. This was before I knew what an exhausting and boring process trying to be a doctor is, and how much more fun photography is instead (trust me, photography is WAYYY more fun). Anywho, if you do pre-med and actually want to succeed, you will spend a vast majority of your time in the library studying. If you’re brown (South Asian descent) and studying in the same place, chances are, you are eventually going to make friends with the other brown kids studying the same thing. Long story short, this was how I first met with Aarti Patel back in undergrad. Aarti was this tiny little thing that would always be in the library, studying her butt off. I’m not exaggerating here, like 8/10 times, she would be in the library studying. Aarti wanted to hang out with us because A) we were really cool, and B) a group can collectively get more work done and study better. I just wanted to hang out with Aarti because she was smart and knew what she was doing, and also to copy her homework from time to time 😀
Aarti in the library our Sophmore year
Senior post graduation dinner, looking stuntastic as usual
As the years went, my roommates and I as well as Aarti and her friend Puja, would always be in the library studying. We all became study buddies and found ourselves in that dreadful library a little too often. So much so, that our group would do crazy nerdy things together, like pull 2 all nighters in a row for our genetics and organic finals, and then do it again a day later for physics and anatomy, or play hide & go seek in the areas of the library that would be closed after hours, or make 2 am runs to Krispy Kreme so we could all stuff our face with the lightest warm pillows of fried dough during the “Hot now” period. Yeah, we were all major nerds, but we still rocked it out. It was hard to leave such a good group of friends after we graduated, but everyone had to move on. I moved on to do photography, while pretty much everyone else from the group went into the medical world. None of us are very good at keeping touch, but Aarti and I still caught up from time to time, and hung out once in a while. She told me a few years back in NY that when the time came for her to get married, she wanted no one else to cover her day but me.
I didn’t think much of it when Aarti told me she wanted me to be her photographer for her wedding, but she called me up a few months back and told me that she had met her man, got engaged, and she was ready to book me for her upcoming wedding. I was not only stoked that one of my study buddies was finally getting married, but also for the fact that she kept her word, and that I would be covering her special day. The thing was, both Aarti and her fiance Kedar could only make it down to NC for one weekend, so if we did an engagement session, we would have one day to do it. On top of that twist, Aarti lives near the mountains in Asheville, which is a good three and a half hours away from where I stay. This was not the most convenient time for me, but if they were gonna be here for one day, then darn it, I was gonna make it happen. I drove through a crazy thunderstorm, made it to Asheville, and we had an extended E-session that practically lasted the whole day. I didn’t know any of the places and nothing was really planned. We just kind went and winged it. Along the way, I found a red barn, some tall grasses, and beautiful mountains in the background. I was like a kid in a candy store with such awesome backdrops and environments to shoot in. Both Aarti & Kedar were troopers and kept up the whole time, regardless of driving nearly 10 hours the day before to make it down to Asheville.
This session was so cool, that I decided posting images would make you scroll a LOT. So instead, I decided to make a slideshow for all of you to enjoy. So without further ado, here’s Aarti & Kedar’s E-session 🙂
A few of the awesome photos incase you can’t wait for the slideshow to load
My brides can climb trees. What can yours do?
Yes, I made them climb on top of the hay stacks. So worth it.
One of my favorites
Congratulations Aarti & Kedar. See you at the wedding!
Bonus mini shoot the morning after!
Probably my favorite shot
Thanks to Aamir for coming out and helping me with the shoot.
Happy 2012 everyone. I can’t believe it’s been almost a full year since I last posted, but a lot has happen within that time. Rather than boring you with all the details, I’ll just say that more posts will be coming on the blog, and it will get a major upgrade pretty soon. You can expect the usual posts about weddings, engagements, and parties, but I will also try to add some more personal posts, to give you a little insight into my world. So stay tuned, lots of changes will follow, I promise. Now, onwards to a new post!
Karmel is a friend of mine from the good old undergrad college days. Back then, I use to come to Raleigh on the weekends to visit my folks, and I ended up hanging out with all the NCSU kids in the evenings. We both had a lot of mutual friends, and hung out every now and then at your usual college hang out spots with all our friends. The thing about Karmel that impressed me was that she was not only very beautiful and had an exotic look, but she was also super smart. She was studying to be an engineer and a very competitive engineering school. Also, she’s very kind. I remember when I was first starting out back in the days, I asked her if she could be a model for me for some test shots, and she happily obliged and helped me out. Karmel, I apologize for how crappy those photos were, but I’m glad you were able to help me out nevertheless. Not too long ago, Karmel contacted me and told me she was getting engaged, and wanted me to photograph her Katb el Kitab, which much similar to a nikkah is just a Islamic marriage signing. Now normally I don’t photograph friends weddings and events, but given the fact that she helped me when I started out, I decided to photograph the event. I got a chance to meet her fiance Sharif at the party, and he’s not only a very charismatic guy, but within the first 5 minutes, you realize that he’s full of energy and just loves to have fun. The ceremony part only lasted a few minutes, but the rest of the night was spent doing what most Middle Easterns do best… dancing their tails off. We managed to sneak out for a very brief moment and get a few shots of them alone, but most of the fun was on the dance floor. Without out further ado, I present you the photos.
