Ciara had no idea I was there, and she was about fifty metres away from me when she found out she was getting engaged.

Tegan had picked the spot: the back of Killiney Beach, under the steep grass bank, on a blanket laid out on the stones. I got there well ahead of both of them, walked the length of the beach twice, and worked out where I could stand and still be nobody in particular.

Empty shingle at Killiney Beach on an overcast August evening, a red and yellow lifeguard flag beside the concrete hut, Bray Head in the distance and two small figures walking at the waterline
The first frame of the evening, five o'clock, before anything happened

Standing Well Back

The first photograph on the card is at 16:57. It is a wide shot of an empty beach with the lifeguard hut, the flag, and Bray Head sitting out in the haze, I only took it to see what sort of light we are dealing with but turned out to be quite a nice shot (if I say so myself…)

That scouting is not padding. On a beach with no cover, the only thing standing between you and being spotted is having decided in advance exactly where you are going to sit, so that once the couple appear you never have to move again.

Then I put the 70-180mm on, walked back up the beach until I was about fifty metres off the blanket, and waited.

A surprise proposal is the one situation in this job where the correct thing to do is make yourself useless to look at. No tripod, no second body round the neck, no standing in the middle of the beach with a camera up. I sat down on the stones about fifty metres off, looking as much like someone who had come to the beach for the evening as I could manage, and shot the whole thing at 180mm, f/5 and 1/500th.

Tegan on one knee on a blanket at the back of Killiney Beach, Ciara standing over him, photographed from well back on a long lens against the vegetated bank

Ciara looking down at the ring as Tegan kneels on the striped blanket, the grass bank filling the frame behind them
17:07:21, nineteen seconds into the burst

He knelt at 17:07 and it was over in about ninety seconds. The camera fired at seven or eight frames a second for most of it, which is the other reason to sit well back: nobody hears a shutter from fifty metres with the sea going.

The bank behind them is what makes these frames work. It is a wall of dry grass and scrub about six metres high, and at 180mm it compresses into a flat, textured backdrop with nothing in it. No bins, no railings, no dog walkers. You could not build a better one.

Ciara with her hand to her face and Tegan standing to hold her, both still on the blanket at the back of the beach

Ciara’s hand on Tegan’s face as they stand together on the stones below the bank

The couple kissing on the blanket moments after the proposal, seen small against the grass bank at Killiney Beach
Still at 180mm, still nowhere near them

Walking In

At 17:08:32 I changed to a 50mm, which in the file order is the exact second the shoot stops being a surveillance operation and starts being a portrait session.

That transition is the part people underestimate. You have just interrupted the most private ninety seconds of somebody’s year, and you are now a stranger walking towards them across a beach. I give it a minute, I keep the camera down, and I let them finish before I say anything.

Killiney Bay looking north, Dalkey Island and its Martello tower on the horizon with a rain shaft and the first of a rainbow over the water
Killiney Bay, looking north to Dalkey Island

While I walked down I got this, which turned out to matter. There was rain sitting out over the bay and the sun was getting under the cloud behind me, and for about the next twenty minutes there was a rainbow over Dalkey Island.

Ciara and Tegan standing together on the shingle in front of Killiney Bay, both laughing, a faint rainbow over Dalkey Island behind them

Ciara resting against Tegan’s shoulder in his orange puffer jacket, Dalkey Island soft behind them

I did not plan the rainbow and I want to be honest that nobody can. What you can plan is being on an east facing beach on an evening with broken cloud, which is the condition that produces one. Killiney on a showery day is a much better bet than Killiney on a clear one.

Ciara and Tegan holding each other tightly at the back of the beach, her face buried in his shoulder

Doing It Again, On Purpose

At 17:11, three minutes after I had introduced myself, I asked Tegan to kneel again, this time down at the waterline with the sea behind him.

Some photographers will not do this and I understand why. It is not the real moment. But the real moment happened against a grass bank at 180mm because that is where the surprise had to be, and Ciara will also want a photograph of it that is not shot from fifty metres away on a long lens. So we did it twice. She knew it was coming the second time and laughed the whole way through, and those are different photographs, not worse ones.

Tegan back on one knee at the waterline holding Ciara’s hand, the flat grey sea and a rainbow behind them
The second one, four minutes later, at the water

Close crop over Ciara’s shoulder as Tegan kisses her cheek, her hand raised with the new ring in soft focus below

Ciara’s hands on Tegan’s face, both of them laughing, the bay behind

The Ring, and the Bay Behind It

The ring is yellow gold with a cluster of stones and leaf shoulders, and it photographs best held up flat against something enormous.

Ciara’s hand held up to the camera with the gold engagement ring on, a rainbow arcing over Dalkey Island in the background
Ring hand, Dalkey Island, and the rainbow doing the work

The engagement ring lying in Ciara’s open palm, held in Tegan’s hand, shingle out of focus below

Ciara holding her hand up in front of Tegan’s chest to show the ring, both of them smiling at the camera

The ring held up close to the lens with Ciara and Tegan standing far down the beach, framed inside the band
Both of them inside the ring, which is a cliché I will keep taking

The Rest of the Hour

Tegan took the orange jacket off around twenty past five, which is the point in every shoot where people stop being dressed for a photograph and start being themselves.

Ciara and Tegan walking towards the camera hand in hand along the shingle, a curtain of rain out over Killiney Bay behind them

Ciara and Tegan face to face and laughing, her ring hand raised between them

Ciara and Tegan walking away from the camera down the length of Killiney Beach towards Bray Head
Walking, which is the answer to almost every awkward moment in a portrait session

Walking is the whole trick. Standing still is when people start thinking about their hands. I sent them off down the beach and shot the backs of them for a couple of minutes, and by the time they turned around they had forgotten I was there.

Ciara and Tegan sitting on the shingle with their backs to the camera, looking out at Dalkey Island and a rain shaft over the sea

Ciara and Tegan sitting on the stones facing each other and holding hands, Killiney Bay behind them

Ciara and Tegan holding each other on the shingle, her arms around his neck

Ciara and Tegan standing together at the north end of the beach with Bray Head in the distance

One Print, Before Anyone Went Home

The last frames on the card are of an instant print.

Ciara and Tegan’s hands together holding a small instant print of the two of them on the beach, the engagement ring on her finger
17:44, and the only photograph either of them took home that evening

The gallery takes a couple of weeks. A print in your hand on the beach takes ninety seconds, and it is the thing people photograph and send to their mothers on the way to the car.

A Photographer’s Guide to Killiney Beach

The Beach Itself

Killiney is about 800 metres of shingle on the south Dublin coast, running from below Killiney Hill down towards Shanganagh. It is stones, not sand, all the way to the waterline. Dalkey Island and its Martello tower sit off the north end, and Bray Head and the Sugarloafs close the view to the south, so you have two completely different backdrops without moving more than a few hundred metres.

The steep vegetated bank along the back of the beach is the feature nobody mentions and the one I would build a proposal around. It gives you a clean six metre backdrop with no houses, no cars and no bins in it, and it faces the right way for an afternoon.

Getting There

Killiney DART station is on the beach. That is unusual and it is worth using: it means the person being proposed to can be brought there without a car journey that needs explaining, and it means a photographer arriving separately does not need to park anywhere visible.

There is a paid council car park at the station and a smaller one nearby, and both fill up on a warm weekend. If your proposal depends on being in a particular place at a particular minute, do not make it depend on a parking space.

The Light

The beach faces east across Killiney Bay. That means no low sun in anyone’s face at any point in the day, soft even light on overcast afternoons, and a sky behind you rather than in front of you if you shoot from the water back towards the bank.

The practical consequence: a grey day is not a problem here, it is close to ideal. What you want is broken cloud with showers out to sea, which is what gives you rain shafts, light breaking through, and occasionally a rainbow.

Where to Hide

There is nowhere to hide on a shingle beach, so do not try. Distance is the cover, not concealment. At 180mm on a full frame body you can sit fifty metres off and still fill a frame with two people, and at that range, sitting down with one camera and nothing else, you are simply another person on a beach.

The two things that give a photographer away are movement and equipment. Get in position before the couple arrive, sit down, and stay sitting.

Timing

Give it more room than you think, and count the part before anyone arrives.

Tegan and Ciara’s photographs run from 16:57 to 17:44, so about forty five minutes on the card. That is not how long the evening took. I was on the beach well before the first frame, scouting positions and watching what the cloud was doing, and the whole thing came to over an hour on the ground. The proposal itself was ninety seconds of that.

That ratio is the honest one for this kind of work. Ninety seconds you cannot repeat, forty odd minutes of portraits that only become possible once she knows, and a chunk of unglamorous walking around beforehand that determines whether the ninety seconds are any good.

An hour of shooting is the right length for a proposal session and for most couples it is plenty. It is long enough that the portraits afterwards are not rushed while the two of them are still shaking, and short enough that nobody is cold and self-conscious by the end.

For the posers amongst us, and I include myself, a second hour is worth having. It is the time you spend on the more deliberate, creative frames, or on moving to a second location once the surprise part is over and done with.

What to Wear

One strong colour between the two of you, against grey stone and grey water, does more than any amount of coordination. The orange jacket in these photographs is the reason you can find them in a frame taken from fifty metres away.

Shoes you can walk on loose shingle in. And a warm layer, because the wind comes straight up Killiney Bay and August on that beach at six o’clock is not August anywhere else.

Planning One Yourself?

If you are thinking about proposing somewhere on the Dublin coast and you want it photographed without anyone knowing, the practical part is easier than people expect. Tell me where and roughly when, and I will handle the rest of it from a distance.

Our Candid session is €400 for the hour and is the one designed for exactly this, covering the proposal itself and the engagement portraits straight afterwards. For most couples that hour is plenty. If you want a second hour for creative shots or a second location, or you are already engaged and want a longer, more deliberate session, The Planned It is €600 for two hours.

There is more on how these sessions run in the guide to engagement photography in Ireland, and the Dublin photography page has the county’s portrait locations, with a photograph from each one.

Have a look at pricing or get in touch and tell me where you are thinking of doing it.