Sometimes when she’s on an assignment, Chattanooga photographer Emily Lester pretends to be a tourist. But if she looks like she’s casually taking in the sights with her camera, she’s not. She’s waiting on the moment when two people in love walk into the frame and one drops to one knee.
“It’s pretty fun to be a spy in disguise,” she says.
Even after 12 years as a professional photographer specializing in weddings, elopements and other life events, Lester admits to still having nerves when she’s photographing a couple mid-“Will you marry me?” She has to be ready to capture an intimate moment without intruding on it, and except for places with nowhere to hide (when she fakes being a tourist), she must remain completely out of sight so that the person about to be surprised with an engagement ring thinks they’re alone with their beloved.
“It’s always fun when the person who has proposed points over to me, and the person who was proposed to says, ‘You had a photographer here? I had no idea.’ So yeah, I’m just hiding out and waiting for the right moment,” she says. “Alone with my thoughts behind a rock.”