Up the Cheese Grater

This job was fun. "Charlie, we need you to go to the 45th floor of a half-built skyscraper and photograph a portrait there."

Yes please, me please. 

Of course you don't just rock up to the building site and wonder up a staircase until you are high above London. No it takes quite a lot of organising and a good bit of high-vis material. You see when you are 45 floors up in a building with no windows and wondering around on a busy building site you have to follow procedures so that you don't fall out or drop something out off the side. Thankfully Laing O'Rourke, who's magazine I was photographing for (designed by the awesome Wardour), made it really easy for us - they gave us all the equipment (see silly picture below) and someone to make sure we weren't putting ourselves or anyone else at risk - but at the same time they let us get on and do our job.

You don't just hop in a super fast lift and 5 seconds later you are way up in the air when a building isn't finished yet. No on a building site you use the temporary lift that clunks it's way up very slowly. It took about 3-4 minutes to get up to our shoot destination. Once their I quickly made my way to the nearest window without glass and looked out - the view was just incredible. We had got so lucky with the weather as it was beautiful sunshine with great clouds to add detail to the sky. London looked fantastic 200 meters below me.