Light Painting Proposal

Bryce Wenker is in love with a beautiful little lady named Val. So much in love that he wants to share the rest of his life with her. Soooo Bryce decided to ask this lovely lady to Marry him and he did it in a way that should make all of us light painters proud. Here is how it happened…

LPP ∇ So Bryce how did the light painting proposal idea come about?

BW ∇ The light painting idea came to me in St. Thomas where we were light painting at a beach bar with a bunch of friends. One of the people we were with asked me if I was proposing. Needless to say, from there on out I knew that’s how I wanted to do it.

A few months went by and we were planning our next journey to Nicaragua. Getting everything ready to go I checked out some of the light painting tutorials on your site and compared different peoples techniques and settings used.

LPP ∇ So what happened when you got there did you shoot it the first night?

BW ∇ When we got to Nicaragua I set the stage the first night and played around with some light painting knowing what was to come a few days into our trip. She liked the outcome so we talked about testing out some shots when we got to Corn Island.

When we made it to Corn Island we went out to the beach the second night and tried writing “Corn Island”

LPP ∇ How did that go?

BW ∇ She was getting all into it and we kept going back and forth who could make the better light painting. I kept having her pace out the steps and draw lines in the sand so we knew how far we had to write. At this point she was like “come on I get it I don’t need lines”

Once that was all set up I told her I would try one last time. So, while she was standing there for almost 2 minutes wondering why it was taking me so long to write “Corn Island” I was in a heavy focus trying to write “Will Marry You Me” in that order backwards without going out of the frame and keeping her in the middle. About half way through the drawing she says gritting her teeth together trying not to move “What the hell is taking you so long” then I yell don’t move! First attempt was so so but legible none the less. I went for a round two and turned out better than round 1. So I yell “Oh sick this one turned out perfect!” Since the camera was on a beach chair I was already on one knee with the ring in my boardshorts. To say the least she was shocked…laughed, almost a couple tears, and most of all surprised and excited.

LPP ∇ Thats really great man thank you for sharing your story with us. I think I can speak for all of us and wish you both a happy, healthy, creative life together, Congratulations!