A La Mesa wedding photographer’s shot of a bride and groom went viral on the Internet in January, garnering more than 1.2 million views and dozens of new derivative images that fans spun off from the original.
(Courtesy Scott Hillis)
Scott Hillis took the photo of Cory and Carrie Shields for their Star Wars-themed wedding in San Diego in October 2012. The wedding featured a ring-bearing R2D2 replica and a lightsaber gauntlet created by the wedding party. The photo was meant as a play on one of the original 1977 Star Wars movie posters, which featured Luke Skywalker hoisting a lightsaber behind Princess Leia.
On a whim in early January of this year, Cory posted the photo to a message board for Star Wars fans on Reddit, a social news sharing website. It took off within the hour, quickly garnering more than a million views. Hillis and Shields now estimate it has been viewed more than two million times by Internet users around the world.
Hillis, who owns Unveiled Wedding Photography, said he always tries to think of unique poses for his clients and knew this idea was a winner, but he never expected it to be seen by so many people.
