Photographer captures misty mountaintop proposal, finds the mystery couple with the help of Reddit

The saying goes, ‘the best camera is the one you have with you.’ In the case of photographer Paul Wolfe, this played out to perfection on Thanksgiving Day when he was hiking along the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon.

As he was trekking away, he came across a mountaintop proposal, which he quickly snapped with the help of his iPhone 5C. Wolfe then processed the image and posted it across social media. Facebook, Instagram and Reddit were all on a mission to find out just who the mystery couple were.

He shared in the Portland subreddit the below image with the text, “I am trying to find the couple who got engaged Thanksgiving Day on Munra Point (in Oregon) to give them this photo.” It wasn’t more than an hour later when, on the front page of Reddit, Wolfe found a connection to his mystery couple.

It was a friend of the couple, who turned out to be a Mr. Alex Gensitskiy and Ms. Katie Verkovod. The friend reached out to Gensitskiy and told them someone had captured his intimate, mountaintop proposal amongst the fog.

As a photographer who shoots with 35mm black and white film and digital, Wolfe shared with us that it was a bit difficult to accept that his most viral photo was taken with nothing more than a cell phone. It wasn’t all dismay though, as he shared with us in an email:

Nonetheless, it is incredible that these devices and apps make the creation of art so democratic and expand our potential for creating powerful images (or selfies or LOLcats). I’m proud of my work and of the image, but I think anyone with a smartphone could have taken the original photo.

As for the couple in the image, the soon-to-be-newlyweds are utilizing their recent internet fame to help crowdfund their honeymoon to Southeast Asia. Wolfe himself even donated to their cause, despite not knowing the couple before a few weeks ago.

Overall, stories don’t get much better than this. A beautiful image was captured, a couple had one of the most special moments in their life captured without knowing and the internet came together to bring it all together.

(via OregonLive)

Image credits: photograph by Paul Wolfe and used with permission.