It’s mid-February and the California rain clouds have parted, which means one thing…it’s shooting weather!

This week I had to be on site for a shoot at 5am to capture the early, EARLY morning light. It was dark and COLD and I could hear my bed calling from the hotel… until the first streaks of light hit the sky. That pre-dawn blue reflecting off glass is one of my favorite colors.

My favorite thing to tease Lawrence about is easy: his laid back persona vs his core self.

Anyone who knows Lawrence knows the staple Lawrencisms: the comfy red Converse (when flip-flops aren’t appropriate), the hang-10 hand gesture, the sunglasses, the “hola” and “let’s cruise” and “we can chill over here”, and a camera cart rockin’ tunes like we might all just stroll down to the beach instead. The embodiment of laidback.

“The shot looks perfect! Except…” Blaine leans toward the monitor. “How do we feel about that lounge chair?”

A Facebook workspace, as you may imagine, is not your average sardine squeeze. If you want a retreat from your living room, but better designed, I recommend relaxing in a Facebook work area (once you’ve cleared enough checkpoints to make Homeland Security blush).

The lobby of the Natural Resources Agency feels like an outdoor experience. It’s a beautifully designed room.

The blue upper walkway and staircase are a winding river. The repurposed wood wall, a dense forest. The opposing stone wall, a sheer cliff face. The topographical 3D ceiling art is a scaled-down model of Mt. Shasta, curling in ribbons around a floating light. It’s gorgeous.

But where the hell do you decide to finally plant the tripod and pull the trigger?

“You GOTTA have cadavers, you GOTTA have robots!”

Lawrence is on an impassioned rant about the booming future of robotics. A Zoom autopsy isn’t effective education for future doctors, and neither is remote STEM education.

“But the problem”, Lawrence laments “is universities are skittish to take the financial plunge.”

To get it right, these labs are expensive as all get out. But the future needs them, and needs them yesterday.

Thankfully, Chapman University, an unassuming private college hidden amongst lanes of craft houses in Orange County, rose to the challenge.

Our NECA journey is full of surprises, and today is a doozy. We have a four hour window to grab a shot of the new Apple Store at The Grove in Los Angeles. But we absolutely DO NOT have permission to photograph, and upon arrival we discover The Grove charges a $6,000 photography fee to fire off a professional camera on their primes. L.A., am I right?

But the other LA in this story is Lawrence Anderson, and he would not be so easily defeated.

The Apple Store was designed by Sir Norman Foster and it’s stunning. Giant glass edifice and a mirrored ceiling, and, thanks to the electrical team at EXP AND HENNESSY DESIGN, at dusk it glows like a thousand birthday candles waiting to grant your every ISO wish.

“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 NECA. 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.

It’s June, 2020. The lockdown drags on. Life sucks. Then… my phone rings.

“I feel like I’m dreaming!” Lawrence sounds like caffeinated sunshine. At the top of his lungs, Lawrence beams: “WE HAVE A SHOOT!”

This is the best, loudest news in months. His gleeful tone, though, takes a sudden turn. “There’s just one problem… We have no models.”

The lights are all motion activated and all eight floors of this dorm need to stay lit for thirty minutes while we capture the morning twilight shot. But they only stay lit long enough to run through half the building. So I’m racing floors one to seven, and Chase is sprinting eight through fifteen.