CHICAGO (NewsNation Now) — A drone photographer was capturing fall colors and the sunset in Chicago when he unintentionally captured a couple beginning their lives together.
Antoine Tissier spoke with NewsNation affiliate WGN about the photograph taken Thursday night.
“I saw their shadow first, which was really long,” Tissier said of the picture he found the couple in, taken under the Grant Statue in Lincoln Park.
Tissier landed the drone and began a 100-foot walk to the statue, but saw that the couple had already left by the time he made his way over.
“They were gone already, so I could not ask them an e-mail or something so I could share the picture with them,” Tissier said.
Tissier then posted the picture online, looking for the couple before being picked up by WGN News and shared hundreds of times.
Emily Hartney saw the photo for the first time after her brother-in-law tagged her in WGN’s Facebook post.
“WGN shared a link and it was getting shared around Facebook and he just tagged me and Omar and he said ‘Is this you?’ And I looked and said ‘Oh yeah, I think so!’ So it was kind of crazy,” Hartney told WGN.
The young couple got engaged in June, and recently took their engagement photos near the Grant Statue with their own photographer.
Her fiancée Omar Gonzalez said he believes the moment was a happy coincidence.
“That was a great time because it was right when the sun was setting, you saw that photo and our photographer had us stand in that tunnel right in the rock, and it just so happened that somebody was flying a drone and took a picture,” Gonzalez said.
Tissier sees it as a special moment in what has been a difficult year.
“I would say something really nice in 2020, not expecting something that romantic and positive,” Tissier said.
As for Hartney and Gonzalez, it’s a positive sign for a couple looking to get married in 2021.
“Definitely a good omen. Good things are to come,” Hartney said.
Tissier’s work can be found on his Instagram page.
NewsNation affiliate WGN contributed to this report.
