In September 2019, the following image circulated on Facebook, apparently showing five construction or ironworkers crowded atop a dizzyingly tall tower:
Simply looking at the image and the smiling men was enough to upset some acrophobic readers, and some questioned whether the photograph was doctored to simulate the scene.
The image wasn’t new — a version shared to Imgur in 2016 featured mostly impressed commenters and a funny title: “Glad they remembered their hard hats.” One commenter raised a question many viewers probably had initially:
Totally wondered how they got someone to take a pic. Then I remembered we have drones now.
Given that the image was shared numerous times to Reddit and other image-sharing places, the backstory and thus legitimacy of the image wasn’t initially apparent. However, Google suggested a caption for the photograph in image search, “five iron workers on the Wilshire Grand Center Tower.”
In September 2016, a few months before the Imgur post, KTLA reported:
Wilshire Grand Construction Workers Pose in Seemingly Death-Defying Photo
A seemingly death-defying photo from atop the Wilshire Grand Center’s spire — 1,099 feet above the ground in downtown Los Angeles — has gained attention across the country … But how did those men get all the way up there?
They climbed an internal maintenance ladder all the way to the top and were harnessed to the inside and outside of the structure, [project spokeswoman Leigh] Kramer said.
A crane lifted the final piece of the spire into place, as well as the building’s beacon.
At the time the image appeared in news items and went viral, CNN reported the tower had an expected completion date of March 2017. Another version of the image showed one less worker. Several mentions credited photographer Gary Leonard with snapping the picture, but did not elaborate:
According to a 2018 piece on a photography-centric site, the image was — as suspected — captured via drone:
This image shows five workers relaxing on top of the new Wilshire Grand building in downtown LA, the tallest building West of the Mississippi River. Coming in at 1,099 feet tall, this building sits next to several other very high buildings that can clearly be seen in the backdrop. Photographer Gary Leonard with the Wilshire Grand Center Project captured this amazing shot with a drone to show the height that these men scaled to get there. Let’s hope they’re all properly harnessed!
Although the photograph regularly appeared out of context and provoked some suspicion it was altered, it shows five (sometimes four) harnessed construction workers atop the spire of the Wilshire Grand in Los Angeles. It was published in “odd news” sections in September 2016, and it was taken via drone by project photographer Gary Leonard.
While the image is real and undoctored, it is not technically a “selfie” by any definition.
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