Whistler secret engagement proposal
Whistler is a destination for thousands of tourists each year. Some of them come for skiing, some of them for crazy mountain biking or adventure hiking. This place has a lot to offer for nature lovers, great food or loud parties.
For Sebastian and Joanna this was a completely different trip reason. At least thats how it looked like for her.
Sebastian reached out to me couple weeks back with his secret plan. He decided to propose to Joanna secretly while they were heading to Whistler for a snowboarding holiday from Miami. And that is how we started to work on the plan how we could possibly do it.
First we started to narrow down the possible date and then some spots with certain scenery around. Then we changed those ideas to completely new ones and started from the scratch again. Well and then we finally had it wrapped and we thought we have a solid plan, haha. Guess what the weather has changed completely and so we went with another one instead.
The temperatures went up for last couple days and snow melted in three lines very fast. Sebastian really wanted to have a winter pine trees theme around for their story and so we were hoping things will work out. Guess what, we got a help from above since the night before the shoot the fresh snowing brought at least some white powder down on trees.
On the day of the proposal.
I have arrived at Whistler after 8AM to check our location we wanted to go for as first option – Alta lake Rainbow park. The views were nice from there yet there was no fresh snow in tree-lines, just frozen snow covered lake. Well, I just snapped couple iPhone shots and sent it to Sebastian. I simply wanted to ensure if we are aboding the first location for another one. Since they just got to the hotel in village, I still had time to drive around valley to our second back up spot Lost Lake to scout it there.
The Lost lake area is beautiful and after walking around the golf club trails the trees started to show white snow on them. Relieved we might have it, I again texted couple shots how it looks to him and he silently scream happiness through his text that those spots look perfect….
Long story short, we pinpointed our iPhones locations so we knew where we were to start with. This way even though they have never been here he could fin the spot I marked for them for a great background before I run to forest to hide out. It took them an hour to get to me through steep snowshoeing trails, and there they were standing on a frozen creek bridge doing selfies of themselves without either of them knowing where I am since even Sebastian could not see me.
Story in images from new Nikon Z6
Here is s sequence of images from two cameras starting with those from far away and hidden. And then moments after I showed up. Guys rocked the place like I was not even around them. We never met, and we simply clicked from the very first email Sebastian sent me… Destiny.
For those technically geeky interested. This secret proposal was photographed with two completely different cameras. Nikon Z6 Mirrorless attached with FTZ and Nikkor 70-200 f2.8 AFS VR II and then my workhorse Nikon D4s with 24-70 f2.8 AFS.
I had a great time to shoot both cameras. I have own Nikon Z6 for 2 months now and images it produces are amazing. This was the first time I had a telephoto lens attached to it. I so far used it with Nikon 35 f1.8 lens with great results and this was very good test in field for it.
The focusing I used for all the shots even the snowshoes runner ones was AFS Single focus. No sequences and camera still managed to get great number of images in focus from the running parts. I take it was cold morning and my hands were not as steady so some human errors are in this too. I have fired 2200 images on Z7 at this session and battery still had 40% juice left in freezing temperature. I am very happy with this finding. Z6 is IMO capable shooting over 3000 frames on full charge.
So far I am impressed with this tiny camera and will post more images soon.
Cheers, Jozef