Photos from my first three weeks out.

So on my first trip out I flew to Dallas and picked up the company van that was left at the airport from the crew that was out a week before. We promptly drove to Louisiana. Then over the next week and a half we bounced around from different locations in Louisiana back to Texas, to Mississippi, and eventually up to Indiana for one day then home for the night. We promptly left again the following afternoon back to Mississippi, Texas, and Louisiana. I have been taking photos the entire time, and now I am going to share some of them with you. I will try to explain what I am doing, why I liked the photo, and where I am at. Enjoy!

In the picture below I am at the top of the first antenna I climbed. The antenna is a digital television antenna on top of a 1,300 foot tower. The pegs are all fiberglass so that there is not a lot of metal interfering with the signal. You can see my shock absorbing lanyard (the red lanyard with the big hook) in the image. I took the photo to give some perspective of the heights that we work at.

The next two images are both from Texas and actually within just a couple of miles of each other. The tractor was sitting right next to a 2,000 foot tower that we had to service, and I loved the image just because of the simplicity, and the different textures provided by the field.

I like the image of the tree because of how lonely it looks on the edge of this barren field yet it is thriving, I also like that there is another 2,000 foot tower in the background to give some dimension and scale.

This is Johnie rappelling off the side of a tower we were working on. I love this image because of all the details. I captured him swinging out, kicking his legs as he swings back to the tower, I love that having him in the image gives some perspective on the size of some of the towers, and I love all the lines that are in the image created by the rope, and the tower itself.

This image was taken of a 900 foot tower in Shaw Mississippi. We arrived at the site and there was a strong wind so we decided not to climb and we were able to reschedule for the following morning. I used a 30 second exposure to capture this image which was enough to capture the ambient light on the tower, the strobes, and the stars. The clouds were moving fast enough that there is a little motion blur to them.

This is the same tower as above. That is Jake replacing a transformer and wiring harness that burned up. We were working on one of the lights on the very top of the tower, so for this image I actually sat on top of the tower and used my 16-35mm lens to capture the image.

This is a candelabra. A candelabra is used so that more antennas can be placed on top of a tower to position them farther from each other. Three antennas can be stacked on top of each other. The candelabra shown has 6 different antennas on it currently. Three sets of two antennas. I have not had the chance to climb an antenna like this one on a candelabra but I have gotten to climb a double stacked antenna on top of a tower with a T, which is like the candelabra pictured except it only has two legs extending away from the tower. Kind of scary none the less.

This was taken in Cedar Hill, Texas.

I was at tier two (about 600') when I shot this image. This is purely for perspective, and to show what we are standing on while hundreds or thousands of feet off the ground.

This is a 900 footer about 15 miles southwest of Houston, Texas. The big globe/dish looking things are used for telephone I think and are line of sight. The little vertical white things are actually much larger than they appear, about six feet long and a foot wide. They are cell phone antennas.

This is Houston from about 600 feet up on the tower above. This was taken with a 70-200 about thirty minutes to an hour before sunset. There was quite a bit of haze in the air but with the setting sun it created a nice pinkish/purple sunset.

Below is the city of New Orleans taken from the southeast side. I was about 1,000 feet off the ground, and I used a 70-200 with no tripod. It took several frames and laying the camera down on the platform to get a sharp image.

I hope you enjoyed the images, I hope to bring you more in the coming weeks. If you have any questions or comments feel free to let me know. Thanks