This was one of my favorite event shoots I’ve ever done. We shot this on the roof of an apartment building on the west side of manhattan. Santiago, the husband, had messaged me a couple months in advance his idea for the proposal and I immediately loved it. Me and John Gregorios, my second shooter, went to visit the location a week in advance to scout the location and plan our certain shots and our positions for the proposal. Santiago and Alejandra live in Mexico and would be flying in the day right before the proposal on a “small trip”. We had gotten there a couple hours early to set everything up, the table on the side with food, the heart shape on the grass made of candles. When it was time, Santiago brought his fiance up to the roof thinking that they were simply here to look at the amazing view. She had no idea what was about to happen.
Me and John were hiding at 2 different places on the rooftop and as you can see in the video, she had no idea anything was going on until santiago pulled her arm and turned her around to face him, then started kneeling down. She was so surprised and everything sort of froze for a second as recorded her reaction and went ahead to take a couple shots. She was even more surprised when she looked around and saw that there were two photographers there capturing the whole thing. After a minute of them hugging and happy crying me and John introduced ourselves as this was the first time we met the couple in person.
We proceded to take more pictures on the rooftop. The sunset was perfect and golden hour was looking so beautiful coming down over the whole city, and we left them for a bit to enjoy their dinner. It did get chilly so we decided to go indoors for a bit and waited for the sun to go down some more, then came back out to do more night photos with the beautiful New York City lights. The night was beautiful, and the couple was amazing to work with. It made me extremely happy to be able to capture such an important moment in their lives, and the joy on their faces made me realize how much I love doing proposals. This was only my second proposal but I know now how much I love shooting them and hope to have the opportunity to shoot many more in 2019 and the rest of my career as a photographer.