Picture perfect proposal

By Sara Gilbert Frederick, Special to The Free Press
The Free Press

June 25, 2009 03:31 pm

— At 3:23 a.m. on May 9, Dan Iverson was crouched outside of Tyler Hasz and Ashley Molumby’s house in a hooded sweatshirt, rain slicker and black stocking cap. As he lifted his camera to his eye, a thousand worries went through his mind.
“I knew that so many things could go wrong,” Iverson said. “Ashley could turn her back to me. She could move out of my field of vision. She could see me there. She could say no.”
But instead, everything went right.
Molumby walked into the Mankato house she shares with Hasz and their son, Logan, right around 3:20, after her shift at Blue Bricks had ended. Hasz and 10-month-old Logan were waiting for her in the dining room, surrounded by a ring of glowing votive candles. Logan was wearing a T-shirt custom printed to say, “Will you marry my Daddy?”
As Iverson aimed his camera lens through an 8-inch gap in the dining room curtains, Hasz got down on one knee, opened a ring box and proposed to Molumby.
And without turning her back or moving out of Iverson’s field of vision, Molumby tearfully knelt next to Hasz and said yes.
“It worked out way better than I could have imagined,” Iverson said. “In less than three minutes, I shot 32 pictures. It was incredible.”
Although his presence might have looked suspicious to outsiders, Iverson was an invited guest at that most intimate of moments.
Not even 48 hours earlier, Hasz had called Iverson to find out if he could be in Mankato late Friday night. He was hatching a plan to propose to Molumby, and he wanted Iverson there to capture the moment for posterity.
Some couples have friends, waitresses or even complete strangers snap their pictures when they become engaged. Others set up self-timers on their own cameras to save the memory. Few are able to secure the services of a professional photographer for the occasion, both because the logistics can be difficult to arrange and because it’s almost impossible to guarantee how the question being asked will be answered.
But Iverson, a
professional photo-
grapher based out of Northfield, had been waiting for an opportunity like this to come up.
Iverson graduated from Minnesota State University and worked as a photojournalist
for newspapers for 10 years before starting Anthologie, a photo studio committed not just to taking beautiful photographs but also
to telling the stories behind them.
“My background is in photojournalism,” Iverson said. “That’s what I want to do even now — to get life as it happens, instead of creating moments. ... Our focus is on telling life stories, capturing those key moments in life.”
Iverson had mentioned that he wanted to capture a proposal moment to another Mankato couple whose wedding he’s shooting. “I said to them, ‘If you know of anyone who might be willing to let me do that, tell them to call me,” he says. “I had always wanted to be able to catch something like that, which is super intimate, but in a way that didn’t interfere with the moment.”
So when Hasz called, he knew he had found the perfect opportunity.
Iverson had already worked with Hasz and Molumby, shooting pregnancy, birth and baby photos for them. He knew that they trusted him and were comfortable with his presence. So he drove to Mankato in the middle of the night and waited for Molumby to finish her shift.
“Once I got over the shock of having to be there at 3 a.m., I started trying to figure out how to make the photo work,” Iverson says.
Hasz had told him the bare bones of his plan for the proposal: the candles, the ring, Logan’s T-shirt. The only time Iverson raised an eyebrow was when Hasz said he planned to lead Molumby to Logan’s bedroom.
“I told him that I wouldn’t be able to take a picture there — there’s no place to hide, and the lighting wouldn’t work,” Iverson said. “So he decided to do the dining room instead.”
Molumby says she thought the candles and flowers waiting when she got home were an early Mother’s Day gift. She had no idea that Hasz was proposing, nor any notion that Iverson was hiding behind the window.
“I had no clue,” she admitted with a laugh. “I didn’t know anything about the pictures until the next morning.”
Molumby tears up when she looks at the pictures Iverson took. All the emotions of the moment come back, she says. She knows she’s lucky to have those memories preserved on paper.
“How many people can say that they have a picture of that moment to look at?” she said. “It’s something you can share with family and friends, and your children. Not many people can do that.”
Iverson and his partner, John Magnoski, who run Northfield-based Anthologie together, hope they can do more such shoots in the future.
“It’s a hard thing to advertise,” Magnoski said. “It’s something so personal that it just has to be subtly out there that we do it.”
“We only need one under our belt,” Iverson adds. “Now people can see the concept and know that it can be done. That’s all it takes.”

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