Wes Johnson

WJOHNSON@NEWS-LEADER.COM

Through the strangest of circumstances, an Arkansas photographer captured a loving marriage proposal on top of Hawksbill Crag on Saturday.

Hours later, he discovered it was a different couple than the one he was hired to photograph.

Jacob Peters, who owns JP Photography in Lowell, Arkansas, said a Wisconsin man hired him to capture a sunrise proposal on famous Hawksbill Crag. Peters was to stay hidden from view, so the Wisconsin man could later present his fiancee with photos of the romantic moment.

Just one catch. The Wisconsin couple, who Peters only knew from phone calls, was an hour late.

"I'm sitting there 10 to 15 feet off the trail with my camera waiting for them to show up," Peters recalled. "This couple walks up and goes out onto Hawksbill Crag and talk for 5 to 10 minutes. He asks her to turn around and get a video of the sunrise, and as she does that, he knelt down. When she turned around it was clear she said 'yes.' She started crying. They hugged and held hands. It definitely seemed like she said 'yes.'"

Peters shot some 400 frames on his digital camera.

With no cell phone service at Hawksbill Crag, Peters drove back to his office and texted the Wisconsin man:

"Hey, congratulations! It was beautiful." Peters said in his text. "But then he asked if I was sure it was them because they got there a little late."

The Wisconsin man described what he was wearing, a blue plaid shirt. It did not match the clothing of the man in the photos.

He had unwittingly shot the wrong couple.

"At that point I was thinking they might think I was some creeper in the woods taking pictures of them," Peters recalled.

He had captured a couple's beautiful moment, but had no clue who they were.

Peters turned to Facebook for help. He described what happened and hoped someone might somehow track down the couple.

"I thought it might take several days to a week," Peters said. "Within four hours of posting it we had a name."

The couple he had inadvertently captured is from Dallas.

David Le, 39, said he and his fiancee, Jenny Pham, 30, are avid hikers. He had searched for a beautiful spot to pop the big question and found prominent Hawksbill Crag, also known as Whitaker Point.

They made the trek in total darkness. Le said he set up a GoPro camera on stands to capture the proposal, unaware that Peters was just a short distance away. Ironically, he and his fiancee did see Peters with a big camera near some bushes, but just thought he was there to photograph the sunrise.

The ironies don't stop there.

Le said he had tried to reach several Arkansas photographers to photograph his proposal, but all were either already booked or otherwise unavailable. One of those photographers he tried to hire saw Peters' Facebook post about the mystery couple.

"She texted me and said 'click on this link,'" Le said. He and Pham did.

"When we opened his pictures Jenny said 'That's us!'" he said. "It put a smile on our faces. She immediately got goosebumps!"

Jenny Pham did say "yes," and a wedding is in the works in Dallas for next spring.

Peters, the photographer, gave the couple his photos for free.

"I just wanted to make something good come out of my screw up," Peters said. "I offered to fly up to Wisconsin and take photos there, but he's not mad about it. I just thought the couple I photographed was them."

Le added one more irony to this story of many twists.

"While we were getting ready to leave, there was a guy in a blue plaid shirt standing there. We asked him to take our picture, and he did. We're pretty sure it was the guy who Jacob was supposed to photograph."