Look closely and you’ll see a man down on one knee. Here’s the story beyond the photo.
When a 26-year-old Ohio woman named Fatima walked through the Boston Public Garden with her boyfriend, Hussain, this past weekend, she had no idea she would leave engaged.
When 21-year-old Tufts senior Aaron Idelson took aerial photographs in the city on Saturday, he didn’t realize right away that he had unwittingly captured Fatima standing in the middle of the garden’s suspension bridge, her brand-new fiancé on one knee, and America’s oldest botanical garden bursting with fall colors around them.
Once Idelson realized what had happened, he posted the following message on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/aaronidelson/status/921854926401261569
He then challenged the Twitterverse to help him find the couple:
https://twitter.com/AaronIdelson/status/921877064965328896
It answered. Sheila Drakeley, of Sheila Drakeley Photography, was inundated with messages.
“I had friends texting me and tweeting at me, saying aren’t you the person doing this shoot?” Drakeley said.
Drakeley was indeed the couple’s engagement photographer — the hired kind, not the accidental kind, like Idelson. Hussain had reached out to her several weeks ago from Cleveland, where the couple lives, and asked her to capture the moment he asked his then-girlfriend of two years to marry him. He was bringing Fatima along for a work conference, she said, because she had always longed to see Boston. Drakeley helped Hussain pick the proposal spot.
After Drakeley saw Idelson’s photos, she tweeted at him, writing, “Found them! I’m the photographer of the proposal and they are so happy this was captured.”
In fact, Fatima said she noticed a drone flying overhead during the shoot, but didn’t think much of it.
However, Idelson’s photos aren’t exactly what they seem.
“I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade,” Drakeley said. “[But] the couple had actually proposed a few moments earlier in a different spot. [Hussain] really wanted to propose on the bridge…but how do you stop traffic on the bridge? You don’t. [So] we were doing it [on the bridge] as a photo opp.”
The real proposal happened about 30 minutes earlier on the grass beside the lagoon with the bridge in the background, Drakeley said.
The moment Hussain and Fatima got engaged in the Boston Public Garden.
Fatima said she laughed at the fuss being made over the aerial capture and joked with her fiancé, “Should we just tell our friends we got engaged on the bridge? That picture is just so cool.”
Idelson said he plans to give the photo to the couple.
“We’re going to blow it up and put it on a canvas,” Fatima said.
