So I have this dear friend named Donna. All of my favorite cat videos and memes come from her because she posts about once a week on my facebook page. I love Donna for this reason (and many more), but mostly because she finds THE BEST cat videos. THE BEST.
Donna pinged me asking about proposal pictures for her niece, Melissa, and put me in touch with the proposer himself, Joe. Joe was not very familiar with the Dallas area so we worked together to find the right location. He noted that he and Melissa were both pretty active and they liked beer – so I slammed him with locations and he came back with “definitely like White Rock lake”. We had a solid start.
Next we needed a reason to get her to the lake and the answer was … kayaking!
The day of the session, I received a text from Joe saying that he was doing some work-related stuff and he was running at least an hour late. He added “this is the worst thing that can happen.” I retort “actually, the worst thing is if she says no”. I’m a jerk face, I know. Luckily, he laughed. Luckily, too, he didn’t actually end up running late – we were up against the setting sun!
I arrived at White Rock Lake about thirty minutes before Melissa & Joe were set to come back from their kayaking adventure and I headed directly to the main kayak station with a picture of the couple on my phone. I didn’t really know how to phrase what I was about to say so I just start talking (typical!): “so, hey, this is going to be kind of strange, but have you seen these two people today?” I turned phone towards the employees. “I’m not a creeper, I’m just here to photograph their proposal.” The three people working there just laughed and responded, “o thank goodness, we were hoping you didn’t have missing people!” The employees let me know that I should be looking for two yellow kayaks and that they should be returning shortly.
I stood on the dock with my big-ass white lens trying to not look like a huge creeper. I see the matching yellow kayaks come into view and the employees from the kayaking company re-assure me that I have right couple in my sights. I snapped a couple of shots of them on the water, but I’m careful because I swear it looks like Melissa is staring right at me.
I let Joe know ahead of time that there are two docks and he is welcome to use either … that I will just catch up with him no matter which he chooses. I’m so glad I had mentioned that ahead of time because, of course, in the 5 seconds that it took them to get out of their kayaks, the closer of the two docks became occupied. They walk to the dock on the other side of kayak station and I’m trying hard to not be the weird creeper with the long lens following behind them. I swear that it looks like Melissa keeps looking straight at me.
Then this happens:
