Getting Hi on the Vibe

Recently I was up about 30 feet on a lift shooting the facade of a gym while my lift operator was laughing at our situation. The lift was borrowed from another company working on the site. That was fine, we had permission, except they had left the lift between two palm trees and the platform 20 feet up. The other issue was that Brian had not operated one before...... But being a good project manager and a quick learner we soon got relocated and made an image that made my client very happy. So, while we were waiting for the sun to pop out between the clouds I reminisced about a similar uplifting experience.


I was hired by Tim Young from GMR Works to go to a General Motors car distribution plant in San Leandro in the Bay Area. The goal was to get elevated on a lift and photograph the new Vibe cars arranged into the shape of the Vibe logo, drop it into a logoed template and get 100 prints by 6 p.m for a car dealers meeting. Making maters more complicated that day was extremely windy conditions and we had to go almost 60 feet in the air to get the proper perspective on the "logo". After getting used to the sway of the platform/cage I finally made a good series of images. I proceded to do the postproduction on the image under a tent and then went and emailed the image to Chrome in San Diego where they proceed to do a rush print job for us. My assistant Gary Flanagan then picked up the prints and jumped on a flight to SF where we met him. He handed the box off to Tim and Gary and I made the next flight back to San Diego. All in a day's work.