So as you may know, and for those of you whom do not know, Renita is one of my best friends of all time and she's been there for me through thick and thin. When the opportunity to be apart of her surprise engagement proposal was presented to me by her, now fiancé Vishal, I definitely couldn't refuse.
Renita is a published model and is very talented, always taking her modeling career very seriously. So Vishal came up with the idea for me to inform Renita that "I have a very important photoshoot gig to do for a famous fashion magazine" and that I most absolutely needed her help to construct a concept as well as model for the shoot. Knowing that Renita could never refuse to help me out, I used that to my advantage and pitched the "magazine photoshoot" to her and demanded that it needed to be done on the beach, as she wore a very elegant beautiful peach colored evening gown, and that it needed to be during the exact moment that the sun set (little did she know, the whole magazine proposal was an entirely fake set up just to be able to get her on the beach at sunset with the beautiful evening dress).
So we decided to have Renita, my assistant, and I, shoot at a specific location while Vishal, his family/friends and her family/friends gathered together at a different nearby location on the beach to set up the beach with rose petals, candles, and the perfect view. Renita and I along with my assistant remained at this location while we shot in order to capture photos for the "famous magazine" that I was shooting for. As soon as they were ready to perform the surprise, Vishal texted me to come over asap as our window for the sunset was slowly beginning to get smaller and smaller. Renita and I ran into a few set backs and time became of the essence as we were trying to match everything up perfectly, so naturally I began to panic frantically knowing that the perfect moment could possibly be ruined. In the mean time, while I was frantically stressing out and losing it, Renita was standing there with me trying to cheer me up and tell me that everything will be okay (as she remains clueless as to what is about to happen or possibly not happen!)
Finally we were able to get to the second location where Vishal and the entire group were at, hiding off out of sight. So the plan from here was to make Renita walk backwards to the location, posing as if she was adding to the concept of "bringing the audience onto the beach to allow them to enjoy the amazing sunset with us." Funny enough, the walk backwards was a long walk due to a few issues, so I was now presented with making Renita walk backwards for about 35 yards. Having anticipating this moment to be the only possible moment that the surprise could be truly slipped up due to a simple turning around to see where she was going, I became super demanding in making her focus and keeping a straight face as well as trying to keep her posing forward. While she walked backwards for what seemed like forever, she ended up seeing the rose petals blow by her on the sand and began to chuckle a little bit, thinking how strange that was (You can see this in the video slightly). As she kept walking, slowly approaching Vishal, she gets closer and closer until she feels him grab her by the waist from behind unknowing who it is, she turns, sees him and standing there... as she slowly realized that a new Journey was just about to begin!
So here are the results photographic images to recap the beautiful occasion!
-Enjoy-
