Recently a new client asked me to photograph one of the electrical buildings they had constructed alongside a runway at O’Hare Airport. They sent me a picture that one of their electricians had shot, showing the sun rising in the distant sky, and a 747 jumbo taxiing by on the runway. The brief was to photograph the same scene so they could enlarge it to 20 feet wide and hang on their conference room wall.
So yesterday morning, I got up at 4 AM and drove to the airport, bringing a 100 megapixel camera and lenses with me to do the job. One of the electricians met me and we headed out to one of the cargo areas to do the shoot. But what stopped me in my tracks was realizing that the picture they had sent was a sunset picture, not sunrise. So I knew I’d have to do some fancy Photoshop work after the shoot. Also, in the hour I was shooting the building, no cargo planes came down the nearby runway at all. Only a couple smaller commercial jets came in on a distant runway.
But I love shoots like this- getting to go to places under tight security, where the average person never gets to go. We were right by one of the outer runways, and it’s only out there that you realize how vast O’Hare Airport really is.
The first shot is the one that’s going to go on their wall. The above shot is what it looked like in real life before adding a fake sunrise and tidying up the rest of the picture, which included adding more grass since they didn’t like the grass that was there. I don’t like changing things in Photoshop a lot, but when the client requests it, I do it.
“OH WOW!!!! I REALLY LOVE IT Let me pass it along to the VP and Owners see what they think.
I think it’s INCREDIBLE !!”
Happy client, happy photographer. :)