Joel Bush didn't know anyone was watching when he got down on one knee to propose to Jennifer Orr. But photographer Patrick Lu happened upon the couple on the capital grounds in Austin, Texas and shared his beautiful picture to Reddit: "Did any of you propose at the capital last night?"

The post made it to the top of /r/Austin with 1,400 up votes (the highest of all time in that subreddit), and Redditors offered many suggestions on how to locate the mystery couple. It turns out, Bush himself discovered the post and tweeted his elation that the Internet had shared in the couple's happy moment.

"The thread found me through friends," Bush tells Mashable. He's active in the Austin tech meetup scene through a site called The Regulars. He's also the co-founder of an on-demand ecommerce startup called Amplifier. "I'm not surprised it found me."

Bush says the candid photo allowed the best of both worlds. "We experienced that magic on its own terms, with no thought about posing or anything. And, because the photographer did such an awesome job, we also have that precise moment and her beautiful reaction captured for safekeeping. It's pretty priceless."

"I felt Reddit was the only place where a post like this could generate enough exposure," Patrick Lu, the photographer, tells Mashable. "Austin is actually a growing haven for tech companies and startups, and I had a gut feeling that the couple worked somewhere in that space (the man was wearing flip flops and jeans, and that's like a uniform for us programmers these days). With a lot of techies, you have a lot of Redditors. I figured someone would have recognized them eventually."

Lu says he has connected with Bush and will provide him with the full resolution photo when they meet up next week.

"I'm sure Jen and I will frame a print soon. It's really a great picture," says Bush.







It's a tale of serendipity for the Internet age. In what other time could a candid photograph like this find its way back to its subjects in such short order?