So I don’t normally publish photos of myself since I am usually the one behind the camera, but this was a very unusual experience.  The Southeast Sun publishes an emergency services special section every year in June, and we try to come up with interesting story ideas and photos for the section.  This year was the man hole.

Melissa Braun, our crime beat reporter, came up to me a while back and asked me how I felt about getting in a man hole to take a photograph.  I was hesitant at first, but I thought it would make a great photo. Fast forward to the day of the excursion. The Enterprise Fire Department had one of their trucks near an open man hole, and the rigging had been set up.  I was strapped into a harness and given a helmet for protection.  They hooked me up to the rigging, and down I went.  The photographs really tell the story, and I have to thank Melissa for documenting the event.  I was only a little nervous at the time, but my facial expressions in the photographs tell a different story.  I think it might have been the fact that the firefighters were joking with me the whole time about faulty rigging and such.

Overall, it was a great experience, and I got a really cool photo in the end for our special section.  Please check out the photos and tell me what you think.

Enterprise firefighters hook me up to the rigging over the man hole.

Enterprise firefighters lower me into the man hole.

Enterprise firefighter Jimmy Willis demonstrates a rescue of an individual trapped inside a man hole.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 15th, 2011 at 9:11 am and is filed under General News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.