My part of history:  the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta marks my first ever professional photography assignment.  I found these images back in October when I was building the new web site.  I have to thank Steven for even being able to retrieve the files!  The software used to scan this chromes from my shoot is completely outdated and obsolete now (wow, another marker of feeling your age!  LOL!).  I was simply working my photo lab job and opened my big mouth – and got this job:

I always went out shooting.  I was compelled to shoot anything that caught my fancy and try to make great images.  I’ve always loved architecture at night and would even take photos with a high-end point and shoot camera I had, just practicing and learning.  Of course, this was the film days so it took a bit more practice than digital does now.  One of my favorite buildings that’s beautifully lit in Atlanta is Resurgens Plaza in Buckhead.  I had taken a series of night shots of that building and they were on display in my photo lab – to demonstrate enlargement sizes to the customers.

So when lighting designer, Robert Shakespear, came into my lab and was disappointed with his late night shots of his lighting design of the NationsBank building for the ‘96 Olympics, I tried to tell him how to get his shots.  I explained he needed to be shooting at twilight, when there was still color in the sky but the building lights were on and pointed to my Resurgens shots.  He was also not getting more than a single strobe firing off in the cage-like spire of the building, so I began asking him questions about the sequence.  He suddenly looked at me and said, “If you can make my building look good like that, I’ll hire you right now.” He went on to say that he needed to fly back to home but also needed to get images to Japan for a publication by the following Tuesday. This was Thursday and he was panicked.  I accepted the challenge (like I frequently do) without hesitation — or any idea what I was getting myself into.

I went out right away, that night, as soon as I got off work.  It was summer so luckily I had a little bit of time before twilight.  However, it was also difficult to get to Olympic park very quickly due to what they called the “Ring” – a perimeter around the park and venues that you were not permitted to drive into and could only use public transportation.  Nonetheless, my mom joined me after she got off work and we headed to the park to see what we could get that night with just 35 mm cameras.  This was going to be shot on medium format for a higher resolution but this was my scouting trip.

Saturday, I went out for the actual shoot.  I had a Yashica-D (twin lens, medium format) and a Bronica I borrowed from my boss. Well, I thought I was well prepared.  I had two pro cameras, right?  Wrong. The Yashica was ancient and some oil had frozen up the shutter blades.  It was clicking “open” but not shutting. Essentially, I got some pretty freaky shutter drag images on that one. The Bronica? Oh boy, I learned the hard way that it’s shutter wouldn’t even work without a battery!  It’s battery was long dead.  We gave up for the night, packed it in and walked back to Sci-Trek where our car was parked.  As soon as I got home, the phone rang and my panicked friend was so happy to hear my voice.  He told me a bomb had just gone off in the park and he was terrified I was still there shooting.  I couldn’t believe him and turned on the TV.  We all know what happened that night and that three people died as a result.  We left because of camera malfunction and I had been so mad.

The park was then closed for several more days to investigate the bombing.  I still had an assignment to complete though!  We went all over town the next three days looking for locations to get the Atlanta skyline images Robert needed.  Our best find was the parking deck next to the Marriott Marquis.  Beautiful spot for the isolated building shot.  But the final close up shot was the doozy, the end all, be all shot that he wanted.  And how I got that is also amaaaaaazing.  My mom worked for Bellsouth for 40 years before she retired in ‘02.  At this point, security is at an all-time high but she took me to the Bellsouth building right next door to the NationsBank building (now the Wachovia building) and asked if we could go to the top floors as she was an employee.  The security manager explained what we wanted to one of the top execs – and he escorted us right up to his very office!!!!!! The resulting shot is below.

I was finally able to get back into the park the Tuesday it re-opened. This was also deadline day.  I had to shoot, process, scan and ship all in one night. It was crazy!

Now, I no longer own the originals of these chromes. They are probably in some archive somewhere?  These are old, old scans from that late night at the lab where we rushed the processing and then I raced to Delta Dash to get them to Japan on time.  And all that work?  The scouting, the broken cameras, and finally, the trip to the top of an Atlanta skyscraper?  I only got $700.  A whole lotta money to a college student!

(Side note:  When the GBI and FBI asked if anyone had images from the night of the bombing, I brought them my damaged, shutter dragged film in hopes they would see something in the double exposures that would help them.  I have no idea if it ever did.)