A Surprise Proposal at Lovers’ Lane in the Presidio, San Francisco
Aaron had a pretty good plan for getting Mikaela to Lovers’ Lane without making the proposal too obvious. Friends were supposedly having a small party near Crissy Field, so they took an Uber to the top of the Presidio and planned to walk down to meet them. Lovers’ Lane was conveniently along the way.
We had already chosen the area around Andy Goldsworthy’s Wood Line for the proposal. I had scouted it for Aaron beforehand, which turned out to be an important step, because the ground around the trees is surprisingly sandy, and Aaron knew Mikaela would not be particularly interested in walking through it in the shoes she was wearing. He came up with a work-around and told her there was "something he wanted to show her" when they reached that spot, which gave him a perfectly reasonable excuse to lead her off the path. {Afterward, he carried her back across the sand to the path, to the delight of us all.}
There was one other problem. Someone in the family may have tipped Mikaela off that something was up, so having a photographer standing around waiting for them would have made things considerably more obvious. So, my son and his girlfriend came along as decoys. I photographed the two of them as though we were in the middle of a regular portrait session, and when Aaron and Mikaela arrived, I simply kept shooting over their shoulders. It gave me a reason to be there with a camera without drawing attention to the proposal.
Another reason scouting helped was the light. The eucalyptus trees at Wood Line create very speckled light, with bright patches of sun mixed with deep shade. I knew where I wanted Aaron to stop and where I needed to be to photograph him. A late-evening proposal would not have worked nearly as well in this particular location.
A surprise proposal has many moving parts that have nothing to do with the actual proposal. Where will your partner think you are going? What will they be wearing? Will they willingly walk across sand, grass or a muddy trail? Where can the photographer wait without being noticed? And what will the light be doing at the time you plan to arrive?
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Those are exactly the kinds of details I like to work out beforehand. Once Aaron and Mikaela were in the right place, my job was to photograph the moments as they unfurled naturally.
Planning a proposal in San Francisco?
I photograph proposals throughout San Francisco, the Bay Area, Napa/Sonoma and the coast, and I’m happy to help with location, timing, logistics and figuring out how to keep the surprise a surprise.
Jody Holman is a Bay Area photographer based in Pacifica, California. She has photographed weddings, proposals, families and portraits for more than twenty years throughout San Francisco, the Bay Area, Wine Country and the California coast.
