Studio.News. 06.22: What is a Fish Hatchery?
LATTC Culinary Arts Designed by Sillman Architects
as observed and written by Jesse Janzen, Studio Associate
“Are you sure this is even possible?” It’s 9pm. I pace my bedroom, phone gripped. Lawrence’s response to this yes/no question is classic Lawrence: “It has to be.”
The pitch is humongous: shoot 55 buildings in six weeks. Excuse me?? Who in the world is in charge of this project?! The answer is an electrical contractor’s union, who, annually, bestows 50 awards of excellence for 50 different electrical projects to 50 different electrical contractors. Lawrence tells me the guy who’s shot it for the previous 30 years always had four months to shoot it and knew most of the contractors.
But, you know, Covid. So we have six weeks and know bupkis.
Questions swell my brain, but Lawrence only needs one answer. Am I in? I imagine the adventure and financial gain. My eyes round with cartoon dollar signs and I tell him, “Let’s do this.” After all, don’t all nightmares start as a dream?
Fifty-five buildings to show-off awards for electrical projects.
From one end of California to the other.
Grueling days to get the shots needed for NECA's Annual Awards.
Three weeks into the shoot Lawrence and I crawl from another random roach motel into the dark a.m. of pre-dawn morning. 18-hour days stitched back-to-back sew weekends and weekdays into sprawling delirium. “Where are we going again?” We consult our enormous, ever-evolving, color-coded spreadsheet. “Are we in Long Beach?” “No, that’s next week. We’re going to Filmore. Where the hell is that?” Lawrence opens Maps and shows me. It’s so very much further than I’d hoped. “We’re shooting a fish hatchery. Do you know what a fish hatchery is?” “I guess we’ll find out.”
The shoot is a rolling Rubik’s Cube of scheduling mayhem. Every destination we’re headed to is who-knows-what. Project names only an electrician would understand:
- LA County Metro Pfisterer Terminations.
- F.E. Weymouth WTP Chlorination System Upgrades and Water Quality Instrumentation Improvements.
- CISCO 10 - TIWRP - EPP Pump No. 3 Train Rehabilitation
…What?
LA County Department of Mental Health 2022 Headquarters Designed by Gensler
SOFI Stadium Designed by HKS Architects
Problem Solved.
I remark: “Lawrence, I’m not trying to blow smoke up your butt, but I can’t imagine a single other person on earth who could pull this off.”
It’s fun to watch Lawrence pull incredible shots out of thin air on the fly with no time. Cramped rooms full of wires somehow become cathedrals full of artistic lines in the photo. Huge ugly water pumps become towering, majestic domes. A sprawl of plastic troughs packed with wiggling tadpoles in a giant dusty outhouse (a fish hatchery), through Lawrence’s lens, is a long wooden gallery popping with texture, beauty, and life.
And the efforts paid off in spades. At the journey’s end the client was so impressed they immediately commissioned Lawrence to shoot The 6th Street Bridge - a structure he’s been cooing about for three years, as well as The George Lucas Museum.
It was a big, gutsy move that pushed us to the limit, and I applaud Lawrence for the bravery it took to leap.