This moment.

"This magic moment

While your lips are close to mine

Will last forever

Forever til the end of time."

There are moments we remember and others we recall; memories are much more powerful than the casual occurrences that are implanted somewhere in the back of our minds. When they are caught on film, tape or a memory card, they are ones that last forever—but sometimes you have to deal with what you have and it ends up living in your head.

So many times I had wished I had caught the moment when it was happening with a camera. There were times when I wasn’t taking photographs (yes, this is a true story) and as I think back, I know they would have been really powerful photographs. Many years ago, there was a storm brewing over a farm when the clouds broke open to shower sunlight on a barn—dark skies surrounded the farm and only the barn was lit. It could have been in National Geographic, but now, it’s only a story that I can tell with nothing more than, “you should have seen it.”

There was also a time when I was on a plane and as it was preparing to land at O’Hare, we thought it might be our last flight—as in forever. Thankfully a pilot, who was also a passenger sitting behind me, went to the cockpit (they actually opened the door) and he was able to determine the landing gear was “probably down.” To do so, he went to the middle of the plane and lifted the carpet to reveal a hole in the belly. But it was the image of the flight attendants, the pilot, and all those sitting near the hole—looking down that made the picture. If I only had an iPhone it would be there, instead today it is nestled in my iMind.

Yesterday I went to Best Buy to buy another external hard drive; we use them to store the many photos we take. When I got home, I added up the number of units we have in our home and took a wild guess as to how many pictures must be in these little black and silver boxes. The number was staggering—best guess, at least 2-3 million photos. 

Unlike normal entries in “Snap. Shot.” I am going to discuss the photo above in the middle of the blog. This photo was taken Saturday night. It was not spur of the moment capture for either the soon to be fiancé or myself. But for his girlfriend, her night was about to become magical. We had arranged this for more than six months; having discussed many locations, best settings, time of day, but as the weather changed, and leaves hit the ground, it became limited as to where the best place would be. As it turned out, it could not have been a better location to capture what will be the starting point for a very happy marriage.

Here’s the story…

I waited for nearly 2 hours in 30 degree weather; traffic made the timing difficult for our friends as they ventured into the city. There were secret texts going back and forth, and a last minute phone call that let me know, “they would be there in less than 5 minutes.” 

Was I nervous? You bet I was!

Sure enough, as I was making certain I was ready to “get this,” people started to congregate around the location. I had this vision of people walking right into the frame over and over again. Six months, several locations, and there was only one thing to do. I went up to these three young women who were standing nearby and told them what was about to happen. They were so excited you would have thought they were the ones about to get engaged. They agreed to make sure no one would block my vantage point and did a really good job of telling people to “move away.”

Then it happened. My friend went down on one knee, his girlfriend stood with her hands over her mouth, and suddenly they went from being girlfriend and boyfriend to engaged. (If love could be captured by a Trust Nikon camera—it happened during that moment.)

The photo above was one of more than 300 taken in a span of 10 minutes. Fate was on our side as an outdoor sign for a diamond company said it all—and unlike the barn, airplane flight and countless other misses, we got it and she said, “Yes!”

Thanks for stopping by.