Fun at the San Ysidro border crossing

I have a client who owns a building in Tijuana which, if you've ever driven back to the U.S. through the San Ysidro crossing, you've undoubtedly seen. It's the one on the east side of the road, about 100 yards or so south of the border, with a facade that is entirely covered in gigantic billboards. A pharmacy is on the ground floor.

The owner of the building is revamping his marketing material and asked if I could make some images that illustrated the high-visibility of the billboards on the building. After all, this is the busiest international border crossing in the world.

The owner of the building had arranged for his secretary, Gloria, to meet me there and lead me around to the spots with the best angles (like the roof). Instead, I was greeted by Alfredo, who was exremely patient with me as he struggled to understand my broken Spanish. (Actually, my Spanish can't really be described as *broken*, because that would imply that at one point it was *in tact*.)

Anyway, I got on the roof and shot a bunch of overviews, then stood on the edge of the building's roof and, while shooting, panned across the entire border area and to the south, showing the line of cars. I'm going to produce a series of panoramas that I'm going to stich in PS. I'll get those up when I'm done.

Anyway, here are some behind-the-scenes pix from the shoot.

Here's the overview of the border area, taken from the roof. If you've ever sat in that traffic, you know how horrible it is.

My ugly mug, juxtaposed against an ugly border.

Creepy staircase leading to the roof.

You want me to shoot from where?!

Wasn't that bad going up, but coming down was a different story. But it was cool, cuz I'm a ninja.