Welcome to the first episode of Photo Breakdown, a podcast where I talk with a photographer sharing the story of a specific photograph, technique, or business win.
To kick things off, I share one of my favorite proposal photography photos in my portfolio.
See the photo from this episode here.
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Transcription was done by Descript or Rev’s automated transcription services which means it’s an AI-generated transcript. The transcript may contain spelling, grammar, and other errors, and is not a substitute for listening to the episode.
Hey, my name is Scott Wyden Kivowitz I am your host of photo breakdown. Now this is a brand new podcast and you’re going to see some great guests coming on, and we’re going to try to keep these episodes to about 15 minutes. My goal here is to share insights, inspiration, and moments of Zen. I’m going to sit and talk with photographers and uncover their backstory behind a specific photograph, a technique or a business win. In each episode, I will choose a photographer that I admire and dig into their thought process while they create one of their most memorable pieces. Now, as I said, the idea is to offer insights, to photographers who are at various stages in their career, as well as those just starting out. This podcast is all about exploration and creativity. And thinking outside the box, these are conversations with photographers who are doing their thing and have overcome big challenges to get where they are.
They share their journey with you. I hope you enjoy these photo breakdowns and the chance to go behind the scenes with some of the most talented photographers in the world. Now I’d like to get started. I’m going to share one of my photo breakdowns. So here’s a story of when my brother-in-law proposed to my now sister-in-law. So he asked me to help plan his proposal and photograph it. Of course, this would meant that I was I had the chance to be a surprise proposal photographer. And I’m all about doing that. And that’s one of my favorite things to photographs to photograph, because it means that I am now, first of all, I get to make for photographs, which I love doing. Of course, I get to photograph great people, which I love to do. And I love to connect with people which I love to do.
And I get to be a spy, which, I mean, w what, you know, I mean, I’m almost 40, almost 40 year old, man. Wouldn’t want to be a spy, right? So I get to hide out, use long lenses and then in my photography business for my surprise proposals sessions, I also offer short engagement mini sessions, right after the proposal is done. I give the couples a break and and then I offer them an engagement session about 15, 20 minutes as well. On top of the proposal. Now, the proposal itself it takes some planning because one, you now have to work with your client in order to, you know, make sure everything’s set in stone and everything is in place. Some, some cases I’m actually planning with the client depending on the situation and what the client actually needs from me.
And I I’m all about helping them plan that perfect in their lives. So in this case this is my brother-in-law. So I, I obviously I knew him. I knew his girlfriend at the time. And so I knew this was going to be a, I think it was actually in March, this is, it was marsh that he was doing the proposal a little bit colder. You want to do it outside. And it’s at a specific park. And he knew exactly where he wanted it, do it. But here’s the thing. When it comes to proposal photographs, you have to scout because you never know if something is going to change. So, for example in this case, I looked at Google maps and Google earth, Google street view all of it. And there was a bunch of trees that I could hide behind a lot of trees that I could hide.
I could hide behind, but yeah, well, we actually went there to actually scout it in person and just to confirm everything where, which way he’s going to walk and where it’s going to be. And what side of you know, is going to be stick me in the left or the right, all that stuff. It turned out all those trees were actually gone. They were all knocked down. There’s no hiding spots for me. There were some trees, but the trees weren’t good enough for me to hide. It would have been obvious that I was there. So, and there was no leads, and this is March. I know it was cold out. I would have been wearing a jacket. I was wearing a jacket and so on. So it, there was no good hiding spots. So what we wound up doing is there’s like this sort of overpass, the that’s near the highway where this park is right off of.
And I actually hid behind the cement at this overpass so that there was no way at all that she would see. He knew I was where I was going to be. She did not. This specific spot also gave me the perspective to see them walking. So I knew exactly when I could start in my approach. So I started photographing them, walking towards this bridge that there is foot bridge, they were going on. And then once they made it to the footbridge, I started my walk and it was probably a good two minute walk from where I was at the time I was using I think I was using a T an extender on my 70 to 200 in order to photograph them walking the bridge. And then they got to the bridge, which meant now there’s noise from other people around there’s noise from them walking on the bridge there’s water.
So if there was any movement in the water, they would hear that the birds, it means I could start walking and the footsteps wouldn’t be a problem. And then they got there and they S they, they started looking around and talking or whatever. And then he gave her a big hug. And then he got down on a knee as she change. She instead of, instead of getting, you know, standing up, she actually stayed in on her knees. So they got both on their knees. It was pretty funny. And he proposed, of course, she said, yes. And then once everything was done, she pointed to me, and this is the photo that I’m sharing in this breakdown. He actually pointed to me and she saw me photographing their proposal. And she was totally surprised. And she was obviously delighted that that moment in her life was captured.
And so the really funny thing is, is that and we definitely did not do an engagement session right after this. And here’s why he didn’t want to give her any hints about dressing up or whatever they were bundled for for winter. And then they were going to go to this park and then go get dinner. Now they weren’t getting dinner. All of our family was there to to, to be there for the moment not this exact moment, but to celebrate with them this, this moment in their lives. Her family was there and, and, and, and his family was there. And, and so she was just ready for just a casual dinner, wherever, and she was ready for just to walk around the park. So she was wearing a breast cancer awareness t-shirt, and it’s not really an appropriate t-shirt for an engagement session.
It’s a great t-shirt of course, great cause and everything. So that’s why she has it, but she was wearing that. So we actually ended up doing an engagement session another time. But this was one of my favorite photos from all of my proposals because of her reaction when she saw me photographing her. And it was great, cause I, it was a beautiful, it’s a beautiful yellow bridge. You got the water behind, you’ve got the sort of wintery tree seen in a distance beyond the water. And I, I managed to get the the bridge with very, very blurred with shallow depth of field, the water behind it is blurred. The trees are blurred and they’re the, they’re the main focal point, but you get the exact moment. You see the exact moment when he points to me, she sees me and she said, whoa, whoa, Scott with your photographing and this the whole time. So this is my favorite from all my proposal sessions. And of course, I’m going to link to this in the show notes for this episode. So if you would like to see the photo that I just broke down for you on the photo breakdown podcast, go to photo breakdown.com and check out episode one of photo breakdown. Thank you for tuning in be sure to subscribe. You can subscribe on all the different podcasts places to listen. You can also subscribe via email at photobreakdown.com. Thanks for listening.
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