250 Foot high Crane

Kaliope "Popi" Fatolitis, of Tarpon Springs, Fla., operates a 250-foot-tall tower crane overtop of the new residence hall in East Campus Village at the University of Georgia on Wednesday, March 24, 2010 in Athens, Ga.

For a sports photographer, you'd think I'd be used to heights. I've photographed from catwalks, biplanes, gliders and a zillion other crazy, holy-crap-dont-look down places. Then i met Popi, 135 feet up in the air and her tower crane above UGA's new dorm construction.






After climbing up the ladder, i was greeted warmly by Popi and with a bottle of water. Lemmie tell ya, nothing calms me down or makes you my friend faster then a nice bottle of water. Even got to sit in the seat that operates the crane. Fun stuff.



Yes.... I can be a total cheeseball.

Strange as it may sound, i felt pretty safe up there.



I limited myself to two cameras with a 16/2.8 fisheye and a 24-85 as well as my Batman Think Tank utility belt system with the shoulder straps. Used a couple of snap-links to attach the camera straps to shoulder straps and brought an 80-200 & a lensbaby up. (I forgot to change the optics in the lensbaby so it doesnt look good) The fisheye gives a good perspective as to how high you are, IMO.







While i was up there, i shot a quick panorama of the campus. I used Hugin to stitch it together. Shot it with a 50. Best advice on pano's is to stand in one place, so the center of perspective doesn't change.