Leah and Kirby - She Said YES!

How do you photograph a surprise marriage proposal on a New Baltimore pier with nowhere to hide?? 

Kirby and his fiancee, Leah, were going to be in town to visit family.  Kirby and Leah live in Arizona and Kirby had thoughts of popping the question to Leah while in Michigan.  Being around family to celebrate this occasion was an opportunity that Kirby couldn't pass up. He enlisted his Mom to help hatch the plan.  Although the idea was to propose on the shores of downtown New Baltimore at Walter & Mary Burke Park, Kirby's mom insisted that he find a way to get pictures of the proposal.  How could Kirby do this without Leah seeing someone taking pictures thus ruining the surprise?  

Kirby's mom reached out to Jen & Ang on Kirby's behalf.  She let them know what Kirby was up to and the desire to capture the moment so that Leah would have something to share and remember the proposal by.  But, how do you photograph a proposal on a huge empty pier at 9:30am with nowhere to hide?   Jen & Ang took it from there!  They scouted the location to check light levels, etc but also to figure how they could pull this off without getting caught.  They brilliantly devised a plan to hide in plain sight. They contacted Kirby in Arizona to run him through the idea.  Kirby had never been to the location so they used Google Earth to walk through the specific layout of the park.  Step by step, they put a plan in place from the time Kirby and Leah entered the park through the proposal  (park in the lot, walk past the flag pole, walk up the pier past us, etc).     

Guess what?  It worked like a charm.  Leah completely fell for it.  Here's how the brilliant plan went down:  Jen & Ang enlisted Jen's son (Ethan)  to fake a senior graduation photo shoot.  When Kirby and Leah pulled up in their car to park, Jen & Ang were already on the pier taking pictures with Ethan. When Kirby and Leah walked past the photographers, Jen & Ang commented "don't mind us, we're just here shooting graduation photos".  While the proposal was going on, instead of photographing Ethan, they shot over his shoulder and captured Leah and Kirby’s moment.