635 - Blackwater Falls
Today we walked in on a nonchalant proposal.
It all started when we showed up to Blackwater Falls State Park in West Virginia to snag a couple photos of the frozen waterfalls. (Alara’s been on fire lately with finding hidden gems.)
Although the park features several waterfalls, it’s named after one fall in particular. And that would be this one”
The Blackwater Falls. A waterfall with an attitude. The snow was plummeting down moments before this shot was taken, but luckily my patience was rewarded with a few moments of clarity.
But that’s not what I’m here to talk about. The marriage incident happened at the second waterfall we explored, more commonly known as Elakala Falls. Now this one’s a bit more of a hike to get to, so it’s less known on the interwebs.
Perhaps that’s why a man suddenly showed up, walked right in front of the shot I was lining up, and proposed to his girlfriend.
I wasn’t even mad. Turns out while I was fiddling around with my tripod in the snow like a dumbass, he’d asked Alara to take his phone and get a shot of them.
Neither of us knew we’d be the only spectators of a moment that’d change their lives forever. But he popped the question, and she said yes. What a world we live in.
And then the bride-to-be started looking at me like I was the photographer he’d hired for the moment. Um…
I snagged a few shots of them anyway. Because what the fuck else was I supposed to do?
Here's the shot I’d lined up, before I was interrupted by the most important moment of someone’s life:
Not a bad place to get married. But I think it’s the casualness of the whole scene that got to us. One moment the place was empty, the next moment a proposal was happening right in front of us.
We gave our congratulations shortly after, and he told us “I’ve known this girl for eight years. I figured it was time to marry her.” Cool.
The next photo I got was of a closer scene that was significantly harder to line up:
My tripod was practically underwater for half the shot, which is no easy feat when you’re literally standing on thin ice and it’s dumping snow.
I’m not sure if I'm more emotionally invested in that photo because of how hard it was to get this photo, or because I actually like it better than the previous photo. Call in and let me know.
And if you didn’t guess by this post, I’m back in the US now! In good ole’ West Virginia. The promised land of landscape photography on the east coast.
More icy waterfalls to come in the next adventure… Stay tuned as I slowly build out my Frozen portfolio to something finally worth looking at.
