Ginger Proofs

More From The Road... August 2010

2010-08-23T23:34:00.000-05:00

Hey everyone!

     Sorry I have not updated in quite a while. I realized that I haven't posted in about three months and figured I needed to change that.
     I have officially hit every state east of the Mississippi since February except for three. Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire. I have also hit a few states west of the Mississippi. Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota. In the past 8 days I have gone from Clarksville, TN to Hopkinsville Kentucky, on up to Evansville Indiana, then over to Des Moines Iowa, then up to Rock Rapids Iowa, back to Des Moines, up to a suburb of Chicago, then down to Decatur Illinois and now I am currently in Missouri just south of St. Louis and have a 1'200' tower to climb tomorrow.
     I have spent the majority of the past few months in Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, and Texas. I never want to go to any of these places in the summer time again. It has been miserably hot down there.
     Anyways, I have been getting requests for new photos and here they are. If anyone ever has a question about the towers, climbing or anything please ask. I will answer them to the best of my knowledge.
Thanks for following along and Enjoy!

This is called a landmark tower. This one is right outside Cincinnati, OH. and is 1,000' tall

It was built to be pretty as well as functional, but because it is pretty it has its drawbacks.

It is scary as hell to climb, and the top 200 feet is some of the hardest climbing I have ever done on a tower. This one is not on my list of towers I would like to climb again. Oh and we started working on this tower at 10 p.m.. We had just gotten off the tower when I took these pictures.

This is on a tower a little ways northeast of Roanoke, VA. Beautiful view from this tower.

A fairly large house out in the middle of no where. Really in the middle of no where. I bet my father would love to be in that house.

Another view of the mountains.

The next few are from the top of a 300' tower in Lima, OH.

It looks so nice and comfortable outside, but I remember it quite differently.. VERY HOT!!

Very cool little red barn.

We did an install at this power plant and this is the view from our hotel room at the end of the day. This was at Duke Energy in Indiana. All the smoke from the stacks looks really cool in the evening light. I don't even want to think about what is in that.

Some very cool clouds as the sun is setting.

I think this is Atlanta from about 1'500'.

This tower has a candelabra on it and this is looking down from the end of the candelabra.

This is what a TV antenna looks like. This one is probably 60' tall and the stuff at the top is lightning protection.

This is called a Bat Wing antenna. I'm pretty sure this is another type of T.V. antenna.

This photo was accidental but it kinda shows how cramped the inside of a tower elevator is.

Another shot of Atlanta from a little closer to the ground.

Looking down on a pond. It had hundreds of lily pads on it.

This was part of a nursery. This was the tree and shrub part... Obviously.

The lake just past the nursery. These photos were taken just outside of Jacksonville, FL.

Byrd working on a light trying to beat the approaching rain clouds. We are about 30 miles south of Orlando here.

This was the rain just as it started forming.

This is how it looked just before it dumped buckets of water on us for a good 15-20 minutes.

This was the next storm that started firing up. Luckily it missed us. Gotta love Florida in the summer time.

This was the next place I worked. Grand Haven, MI. I flew from FL to Kansas City, then drove from Kansas City to Grand Haven, Michigan. It made for a very long two days.

This place was beautiful and at a pleasant 75 degrees, it sure beat Florida. Can't go wrong with Lake Michigan right next to you.

This was a small pond where the water is recirculated to cool the turbines of the power plant we were on. Could make for an interesting abstract art piece.

From 300' up this looks like a toy..

I like to look at this and imagine that one of those houses are mine and that I am cruising by in my yacht.

I eventually made it home from Michigan and then I was sent back to Florida. I think this may be around Orlando... I think..

Another form of lightning protection. If I were lightning I wouldn't want to strike that, it looks painful.

This is an F.M. antenna.

Marcus resting and waiting for me to finish taking pictures. The platforms don't look that big from the ground.

Sunrise from the west side of Houston, TX.

The sun is still rising.

The top of this tower had a big plate on top of it and it was very interesting getting on and then off of it. In this photo you can see the top of the beacon at the bottom left and the lightning protection sticking up around it.

Self portrait from 2,000' at about 7 a.m. in the morning. I think the lightning protection wanted to say "hi" as well.

Oh yes another sunrise photo.

This is a panel antenna and it is another type of T.V. antenna. The trees and houses look tiny from 2,000'.

The wide angle lens distorts and makes everything look further away and much smaller.

I think this is either central Mississippi or somewhere in Texas.

This was sitting next to the tower at a site in Mt. Selman, TX.

No real story. I just like the texture and color tones.

Pretty good sized garden spider and her babies.

It looks to me like this door has seen better days.

Marcus climbing up a 300' tall A.M. tower. The small towers are scarier to climb because they move a lot more and you are out in the open rather than climbing inside them.

Marcus right at the top.

He has the beacon open and is replacing the bulbs now. These are about the only type of lights that use bulbs and not flash tubes. In this style light you are literaly screwing in a light bulb.

Corn field. Not sure why there where two big paths cut through them.

All the cow trails look like veins running through this field.

A medium sized farm for Iowa. I am in love with the old barns in Iowa although I haven't gotten to stop and shoot any of them.

Driving down the road enjoying the clouds and blue sky, not enjoying the flatness that is northwest Iowa..

The past few weeks.

2010-05-21T22:21:00.000-05:00

So I have been slacking on my posts. I apologize for not getting these done more often, but between work, and happenings while I am home and actually having to go through the images that I have taken leaves me very little free time. Since my last post I have gone out on two different trips. The first trip I was out for about a week and half, or maybe two weeks primarily in Texas. The second trip was down to Atlanta, and then up to the Outer Banks in North Carolina and then home.

My first trip of the two. I flew out to San Antonio, and drove up to Odessa, and then back to San Antonio, then to the southern tip of Texas, then to a town just south of Houston, from there we went east to Louisiana and went to a couple of towns there, then all the way back to San Antonio. We then went to a tower in Texarkana and finally got to go home. UGH! It was a lot of driving... The first week out we ended up clocking 45 hours just traveling and another 30 hours actually doing service.

My second trip consisted of driving to Atlanta, and going to four locations near the Atlanta metro area, we then went up to Augusta, then drove north to eastern central North Carolina, and over to The Outer Banks area, then just north east of Charlotte and from there we went home. So needless to say I have a lot of photos I am posting and nothing too exciting to talk about. I have however discovered that people have a lot of questions concerning my work and different tower myths. So from here on out I am going to take questions and try to answer 5-10 questions on my next few posts. I hope you enjoy the new photos and I hope to hear your questions in the coming days and weeks.

Somewhere in between San Antonio and Odessa, TX.

So when you are 2,000 feet in the air you aren't looking up at the clouds, you are eye level with them. These clouds combined with the sunlight kept on surprising me with all the rays of light shooting through. This tower is in Devers, TX.

The ground complete with cows, and yellow wildflowers.

Above the clouds you have a beautiful blue sky!

Self portrait at 2,000 feet. Still in Devers, TX.

This is a type of lightning protection. If you look closely you can see where lightning has struck and fused some of the bristles together.

I always thought the only way to look down on the clouds was from an airplane or helicopter. Guess I was wrong..

An old T.V. antenna. This was taken down after the switch to digital antenna's. This tower is in eastern central Louisiana right on the Mississippi state line.

The Alamo!!

A couple of huge Koi fish that were swimming around in this little pool at the Alamo.

The door to the Alamo Library. I think this was standard equipment back in the day.

From the bottom of a tower that is located about a half hour northwest of San Antonio. If I ever moved to Texas, this is where I would want to go. It is very pretty there.

I would not want this little guy to come after me. He just looks mean!

An old car and truck we found while killing time at the tower site.

This is on top of a 24 story building in Atlanta. We were called out to change the light on top of the structure. There was only one problem, the architect designed it with no ladder to climb it, and it is 70 feet tall. We tried for three hours to figure out a way to get up it, but in the end we had to walk away.

Atlanta!

I just love the textures and lines.

I just thought it was nice the way the wind was blowing the grass in the fields around and this is my attempt at capturing it.

A couple of old spools of cable from when they built the tower.

I am constantly looking at new textures, and I love the way the light falls on the tree and vines.

For some reason I have always been intrigued by the lines in a corn field.

Old house in central North Carolina. I would like to go back one day! There are old homes and barns like this everywhere!

Ahhh.. The beach.. Nags Head NC.

I was really wanting to go surfing, but the water was as flat as a pancake..

Sunrise!! Went to the beach at 5:30 in the morning for this shot.. Stayed out till midnight the night before.

I love clouds.. They really do some amazing things sometimes.

I found a new friend... Until I turned my back and he disappeared.

This is from a tower near Powell's Point, NC. I could see all the way out past the Outer Banks!

Hope you enjoy them and I am ready to hear all the questions you guys have for me!

Trip up north.

2010-04-20T00:32:00.001-05:00

I just returned from another trip on the road that took me up to Minnesota, down to Ohio, and ended in Illinois. Seven of us went to Minnesota to install a brand new lighting system on a 550' tower. It took us three days to get the job done, one of which I spent fourteen hours on the tower. After the job was completed, Jake and myself stayed up north to continue doing service to other towers in the area. Since the majority of our jobs were night jobs we had time to go play. That gave us a day to play in Minneapolis, so we spent a few hours at the Mall of America (which is huuugggeee!!!). We went from Minneapolis to Madison, Wisconsin. The job in Wisconsin took us all of five minutes to plug in a battery. We then hit the road traveling towards Cincinnati. On the way to Cincinnati we stopped and spent a few hours in Chicago! I had never been to Chicago and can't wait to return. We divided the drive to Cincinnati into two days because all we had to do is a night climb on a 1,000' self support tower. We drove up to Dayton the day after our climb. We had two climbs while we were in Dayton, one was about a 600-700' climb we did the afternoon we arrived, and the other was a 1,200' night climb, which was the scariest climb I had ever done. When we finished in Dayton we headed over to Evansville Indiana to meet Johnie and install eight new lights on a smoke stack at a power plant. The install took us two days. From there Johnie and I went to Springfield, Illinois for four days worth of work on two different towers. Both towers were 1,200' and I had to climb to the top of the first one two nights in a row, and climbed to the top of the second only once. From there we finally headed home.

All in all I was out for 18 days. One week I ended up clocking just under 80 hours. I climbed above 1,000' six times, and was scared for my life only once. I got to visit Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Ohio all of which I had never been to, as well as six new cities; Minneapolis, Madison Wisconsin, Chicago, Cincinnati, Dayton, and Springfield Illinois

Now about that being scared to death. So while we were in Dayton Ohio we had to fix a light on the fourth tier of the tower. The tower is about 1,200' tall and the fourth tier is right under the antenna on the top. When we arrived at the tower we could hear the wind roaring through the top of the tower.It sounded like a jet was flying over head! When I started climbing I stopped about 50' off the ground and while I am hanging in my harness I can feel the tower lurching and shaking. At this point I have been on several towers in some pretty intense wind but I have never felt one shaking while I was so close to the ground. We decided to go ahead and as we started climbing we could feel the wind getting stronger every 50' or so. at about 900' we were experiencing continuous wind between 30-40 mph with gusts reaching 50+ mph! I could actually stand on the rung of the ladder, pull myself into the ladder, let go and the wind would hold me against the ladder! I had only heard stories about wind that strong on a tower. When we reached the top of the tower, we could actually feel the tower swaying and as we looked at the tower beside us we could tell that the tower we were on was swaying about four to six feet! We fixed the light and promptly got off the tower. When we reached the ground the engineer in charge of the tower told us that his company had not wanted to fork out the money to have the tower properly maintained. He said the guy wires had not been tensioned since he started back in '98... The guy wires are supposed to be tensioned every two years!! That is one tower I will not ever climb again if the wind is blowing at all!

Enjoy the photos below! The first is from Iowa, and they go in order to the last day in Illinois.

Somewhere in Iowa. I love the texture and color the fields provide.

The following 5 images are from the install in Minnesota.

This is the tower we installed new lights on. Note the FM antenna at the very top, all the other smaller antennas are cell phone antenna's which make the tower a pain to climb. Also notice the change in color of the top guy wires, the last hundred feet of the guy wires are actually fiberglass so that they don't interfere with the radio signal. The two lines at the top of the picture are the rigging lines we used to pull everything up to the top of the tower.

Jake's shadow from 300' up.

Jake wiring a junction box. We are only about 300' up here.

The guys at the end of our first day of the install.

It looks like the clouds are getting ready to attack the tower.

You never know what you will find at a tower site! Some tower site in Wisconsin.

Jake working on a light with the Cincinnati lights in the background.

Cincinnati from the top of a 1,000' tower.

Looking up through the center of a self support tower.

1,000' self support in Cincinnati. These towers have three legs and at the base the legs are about 150' apart and the legs at the top are only about 4' from each other.

The most scared I have ever been on a tower happened while on the tower to the right. Notice the candelabra on the top of the left tower.

A little closer look at the candelabra. It's kind of hard to really see the third leg on the right side, and notice the bright orange digital antenna on the left leg.

The inside of a smoke stack. Believe it or not it is quite dirty in there!! Yeah, I would never have thought that either!

Looking down from the top. The white at the bottom is actually only half way down. It is concrete that is about four feet thick that is there to keep the actual smoke flu or chamber stable and in the center of the outer ring. Note the ladder on the left side, it is fully enclosed although you could still fall about thirty feet to the next landing.

Finished up with a beautiful sunset about an hour outside of Springfield Illinois!

I hope you have enjoyed. I am currently in San Antonio Texas and will bring you more of my life next time I return home.

Photos from my first three weeks out.

2010-04-04T00:43:00.000-05:00

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

I'm on the road...

2010-03-27T02:03:00.000-05:00

So since the economic downturn photography has slowed down for me, and all the other professional photographers I know. Instead of waiting it out (which I tried to do), I decided to change things up and try a completely different line of work. Something that will allow me to travel, climb, and still take photos. Sooo, I have landed a job as a Tower Dog. For those of you who do not know what a Tower Dog is let me explain. A Tower Dog is someone who climbs and works on towers for a living.

I landed a job for Strobe Tech. A company that specializes in high intensity lighting, mainly on smoke stacks and broadcast towers. Most cell towers are between 150' and 500' tall, broadcast towers are between 500' and the tallest in the U.S. which is 2,068' tall. As of now I have climbed to the top of a 120' tall antenna on top of a tower that was nearly 2,000' tall.

Since I started this job I have learned a lot about the tower industry as well as how dangerous it is. As of mid February, 15 Tower Dogs have lost their lives since the start of 2010! Which makes tower climbing the most dangerous job in the U.S. right now. However 98% of tower deaths are contributed to improper use of safety gear, or just not using the safety gear period, and during the new construction of a tower.

So anyways, all this tower climbing has got me thinking, along with the fact that I am a photographer. I feel there is a need for people to see what I get to see on a daily basis. So I am going to start posting pictures weekly as well as updates about where I have been and where I am going next. Currently I am on my way to Minneapolis Minnesota.

I will post some pictures in the coming days of where I was the past three weeks and some of the sights I have taken in.