Eunice had the idea to hire a photographer in Paris to record memories of a trip with John, her boyfriend of ten years. We only spoke with her as we carried out the simple steps of setting a date and exchanging ideas about locations. Then just two days before the shoot we received a secret email from John. He had decided he wanted to propose during the shoot. Without his gal knowing we all conspired proposal plans. This was made challenging by the fact that the proposal had to be at the end of the three-hour shoot so tears wouldn’t mess up her make-up at the beginning of the shoot. Further, the end of the shoot would be at night since Eunice had already been wooed by our idea of shots by the carousel at dusk.
Shooting documentary shots by flash at night can be unflattering. The solution, steal lighting that is set up for a movie shoot. We won’t reveal our connections, but we had inside info on a movie shoot at the foot of Trocadero. When we showed up the movie lighting was waiting for us so all we had to do was give John his cue. To distract Eunice from the obvious, we asked her to look straight into Anthony’s lens for some serious portraits. Gracefully, John pulled out the ring and softly called his girlfriend’s name. Eunice showed great discipline by not being distracted from Anthony’s earlier instructions to look right at the lens. John romantically called again and Eunice, determined to give her best serious face, kept her eyes locked on the camera lens, unaware of what was about to happen. She even answered John saying, “stop calling me, you’ll make me laugh!” Such professionalism brought a slight chuckle from John. This caused Eunice to finally glance down and realize a proposal was taking place. The surprise and emotion that followed were genuine and charming.
Thank you Eunice and John for letting us be a part of something so adorable.