Sometimes beautiful moments happen when we just follow the wind wherever it takes us.
And this time, the wind took us to the peak of the mountain where lavenders grow only on one side of the chapel.
And because it’s soo beautiful, we just have to share it so people would know that it actually happened for real.
(Thanks to Luiza & Pietro)..
Please take a look at the pictures and watch the video first, before reading on to discover the story behind.
Don’t forget to turn on the audio.
Our job as photographer & videographer is to capture the proposal-moments. Which is already quite a challenge, since surprise proposal can not be repeated.
So when you engage me for surprise proposal, we will discuss the time & location, plan A, plan B, etc, to get it right.
But sometimes, things happens on the day, that you just have to trust me to help create the proposal moments.
and the story behind this surprise proposal scene is exactly that!
So thank you Pietro for your trust in me.
Behind the story : You’ve got a friend!
Your photo/video-graphers are your friends, or at least your accomplice. You want to have a perfect surprise proposal, we wants to capture beautiful frames!
As the day get closer, we got worry as well, paying attention to the weather forecast, the angle of the sun, and so on.
And that was what we did : getting worried.
It rarely rains in Valensole, but when it does, it rains a whole lot! That’s what happened that day!
We were watching the clouds on weather radar again and again that day, hoping to see them go away to the east.
But it didn’t happen.
And when we arrived in the lavender fields : the rain was even pouring down like a broken dam, the whole face of the earth went wet!
The provencial earth could not absorb water quick enough. Instead, brownish mud was flooding even onto parts of the roads.
.
Must we call off the plan?
How disappointing would that be!
And we can’t reschedule for tomorrow!
The forecast were worst, and they’re leaving the day after.
.
Canceling a proposal-day?
Not good!
No way! The show must go on!
Kneeling down in the mud?
And so for the last chance we headed north, up in the mountains, because someone once told me it won’t rain up there, even when it pours down like crazy here in the plateau of Valensole.
And as we drove up there, orange lights appeared in the northern horizon, as the day was closing to an end.
It won’t rain !
For sure!
We look at each other, me and my partner….
We must make the call:
Go or no go?
“Let’s go!”, and so we decided!
And so I texted him, “No rain!”, “Better take toll-road” I added, as we were struggling with flooding and debris on the country road we took.
It’s a hard to get to that location, there, up in the mountains, through winding roads and steep corners. Around 45-min drive, even with toll-road. That’s why I don’t normally take people there for photoshoot, unless if it really match the scene to make it worth the effort & extra time.
But anyway, to cut the story short, there we arrived at the top of the mountain, before dark, everything was dry, just a little bit of mist that come and go, and the colors were so beautiful.
Before long the couple arrived, both of them went into the lavender fields without noticing us, and the surprise proposal just happened as planned.
Even better than planned!
And the rest you can feel it in the photos & video.
Plan-C : Wherever the wind blows
Now, please don’t get me wrong, don’t count on photographers to have beautiful-plan-C in the pocket.
It’s always better to go with plan A or plan B as usually discussed before the day,
But when plan A and plan B doesn’t work that day, sometimes, I said sometimes, you must have faith in us!
A photographer will “follow the wind”, and may end up with a beautiful plan C. … sometimes!
The wind took us to the top of that mountain that day,
The wind that we’ve already felt coming a few days before,
We followed it where ever it took us,
and we weren’t disappointed.
About capturing emotions
That is our art! That is the ultimate aim of our work, the inatainable goal, the forever-hunger.
The aim is to capture emotions, capturing the humanity in a person, so it can be understood by others.
Picture to freeze it in time, and video to relive it again.
More than the technical quality of the image, for us it is the quality of the emotion that an image can retransmit which is more important.
Emotion is vibrations, feeling is frequency, a song that sings inside our head.
We can capture that vibrations, we can feel other people’s feeling.
But the real feeling, the real emotions belongs to them!
Not to us viewers!
We just capture the remnants, the remaining echo of what they feel.
On that mountain,
From a distance, we were just harvesting beautiful frames, capturing emotions.
And you viewers, receiving the vibrations like sound that resonates in a bottle.
But the real memory and emotions are theirs! not ours!
Watching these photos and videos,
We may only feel a fraction of what they feel, even if it already got us a bit emotional.
But for them: it just simply brings them back to that mountain top!
In the middle of the lavenders!
As simple as that!
That’s the difference!
That’s how powerful it is.
(I hope you understand what I mean, it’s kinda difficult to explain.)
