Prologue

It’s 2005. A high school sophomore learns from a friend that there is this website where you can journal you thoughts and feelings and no one you know will see it. This sophomore already had a myspace account but he figured “okay, I’m 16 and I have feelings… let’s give this dang ol thing a shot.”

You may want to sit down for this, but spoiler alert, that sophomore was me.

Little did I know I’d be writing in this website for the next 15 year. Granted, I did take long breaks here and there, but overall, it’s nice to go back and read through. It’s like a history of how I grew up and the experiences I gained. I actually grew close to some of the other authors on the website, commenting on their profile pics and then commenting back. I didn’t know any of them in person which was nice because I felt like I could be totally honest.

Alicia and David

One of those friends on this website was Alicia. She had been writing for a long time and, while I don’t remember how we first connected, my oldest memories were reading about her complaining about nursing school. So, as a fellow student, I could relate! I followed her journey for years, and then one day she starts writing about this guy named David. As a fellow David, I could tell this dude was probably good looking and charming as heck (and probably hilarious like me).

Well, fast forward to last year and she sends me a quick Facebook message explaining that she will be visiting Austin with David. She suggests meeting up for some couple’s photos, although she wasn’t engaged at the time. I’m like “yo this sounds great to me! Let’s do it!” So, unlike 99% of my other relationships on that journal website, I finally met someone in person. Although it was brief, it was really surreal meeting someone whose thoughts you know so well, yet you have no clue who they are in person. I wish I could explain it better, but I’m not complaining. Alicia and David were warm and fun and while the photo session was just a little mini session, it was a lot of fun and the photos turned out great!

Austin Texas Engagement Photography Example

More fast forwarding… Alicia reaches out and says “hey yo dawg what up fam, we’re actually engaged you down to fly over to V-town to shoot our wedding?" (Probably not her exact words but that’s how I remember it). Of course, I’m super down… but we had no clue that the world was about to fall out.

February, March, April all pass and we all know the story. Weddings are being reschedule, cancelled… everything is up in the air (thanks a lot Covid). Props to Alicia, for real. She works as nurse AND planned a wedding through a pandemic. I can’t even imagine how difficult it was to juggle those two super difficult jobs. There should be an award for multitaskers.

Anyway, the wedding day comes around and honestly, besides the cloudy weather, everything felt so perfect. Hand sanitizer and masks are readily available. People seems to be in good spirits (I guess they were just excited to be out of the house!) and from what I could tell, were wearing masks and social distancing as well as they could. Hooray!

Well, after a lovely ceremony and most of the way through the reception, the sun comes out. I’m like “dope! As soon as the sun sets a bit more, the light will be just right and we can grab some sunset photos!” I look at the sky and don’t see any clouds coming back soon, so great news! Because it was definitely a bit early for sunset photos, I like the sun to be pretty close to the treeline for the optimal lighting conditions. However, disaster strikes. Clouds come back about 20 minutes before the sun was getting where I wanted. At this point, I’m pretty freaking sad because I risked it all and lost. I am getting ready to tell Alicia that we should just shoot our couples photos while there is still light outside, albeit, cloud lighting.

But then, I take another look at the sky and see a small break in the clouds coming. Did you know that photographers are short term meteorologists? So I run over to Alicia and I’m like “Hey we need to get to the field like immediately because the sun is going to peek out briefly and then go away forever!.” She runs over to David and he replies with “Word homie, I’m finna rock these photos you feel me?” (again, that’s probably not exactly what he said but it’s how I remember it).

So we run over to the field and just as I thought, the moment we arrive the sun peeks out… for legitimately, like 90 seconds. I couldn’t have been happier with the way the photos turned out honestly!

I’m super looking forward to continue following Alicia’s story with David on our new journal website (rip DE…. we will miss you). Okay, onto the photos… enjoy!