“This is one of the strangest things that’s come along… and completely out of the blue!” said Dale.  I’d been photographing Black Bear and Elk in Montana and was working my way home when I got the call.  I was overnighting in some little rinkydink town in central Utah when I called home and asked my wife, Bernadette, the usual question:  “What’s up?

 “Get yourself home now! you’ve got to be in Long Beach on Monday!” she said.  After much confusion and disbelief on my end, followed by a telephone call to the assistant production manager of the show, the deal was done.  I’d be driving 700 miles the next day to get home then getting ready to fly to the taping in Long Beach the following Monday.

 I had two days to get it together for… well, I wasn’t quite sure…

The producer had seen my website ( www.dalephoto.com ) and UFO calendars and figured I’d be the perfect guy to do a computer-illustration of the converted tractor to Crop Circle Maker.  Nevermind I don’t do engineering illustration and I usually get a week to produce an ad, CD or book cover. 

The next two days were spent trying to get my laptop computer to emulate my desktop workstation and loading as much reference material as possible.

When I got on the plane Sunday afternoon I was pretty nervous about what I’d be doing; the pressure, the TV cameras, Jesse, etc.  And in post 9-11 America, air travel with computers, digital cameras, card readers, digitizing tablets, etc. is no fun at security (good thing they only care about shoes).  Actually this whole TV thing made me much more nervous than those Bears in Montana!

 I was picked up at the airport and taken to a hotel near the garage/studio in Long Beach and given a call sheet with a list of names of everyone on the Design and Build teams with instructions where and when to meet the following morning.

Immediately one name on the Build Team list stood out ---Travis Walton.  I thought, “This is ironic, a builder on the Crop Circle project who shares the exact same name as the most famous UFO abductee since Betty and Barney Hill!?” Except it was no coincidence, the next morning when we all met, it was the Travis Walton!  The guy himself ---who’s story is told in the movie, “Fire in the Sky.”  Wow!

 I also met John Lundberg, the British Crop Circle maker.  In the photo, John and I look much more excited about meeting Travis than he us.

The “Monster Garage” producers put together quite a team.  Travis Walton (alien abductee) as a builder along with Terry, from John Deer (if he can’t make the tractor run, we’re screwed!) and Brad Sutherland (who claims to have seen an actual Crop Circle form before his eyes in Wisconsin).  John would be handling the Crop Circle design and I’d be visualizing the whole thing in the computer before anyone twisted a wrench.  Of course Jesse, a man of few words and many tattoos, would be doing his usual “supervision.”

After over an hour spent filling out legal documents we started shooting.  The show starts with everyone being introduced and making a dramatic entrance.  Then we go upstairs for the Design Meeting with Jesse.  Two cameras shoot us brainstorming the idea as I frantically attempt to sketch what they’re describing (nevermind again that I use cameras and computers because I can’t draw).  At the end of the meeting I say, “OK, I’m going to shoot some digital pictures of the tractor, get it into my computer, and get going.”

Cut.  Now it’s time for me to hunker down and get to work.  John has plenty of work to do too because Jesse wants to make a crop circle that looks like his company logo  ---a Maltese Cross!  Nevermind that John has spent years making nice round circles and now Jesse wants  ---corners!

By the time I set up my computer, card reader, digitizing tablet, tripod and digital camera the producer looked over the setup and decided it looked pretty high-tech cool.  Now he’s got guys shooting me shooting the tractor.  And there’s a camera shooting over my shoulder getting screen-shots of my computer and the whole process.  All this is done “upstairs” in the Design Loft because it’s already lit for TV cameras.  Too bad for me the “loft” is up in the top of an already hot garage, under hot lights  ---urgh, gimme another one of those Red Bull drinks, I’m sweating here….

By midday the assistant producer is telling me to hurry up and get something printable out of the computer.  (Nevermind I’ve put in two hours on a job that might take a week normally  ---but this is far, far from normal).  I burned a CD and we took it to the printer, pinned the print to the wall, and the builders got started.  I continued working on a “final” illustration.  By late in the day I thought I was 90% finished when I called the producer over to have a look.

 Bad move.  He changed most of it!

 “No problem, anything you want,” was my (fake) cheery reply.  What could I do?  Say “no” or snivel about it?  No way.  Back to work…

By very late in the day I’d made all the producers’ changes (and Jesse’s last minute alterations) and burned another CD.  Another assistant rushed the CD off to Kinkos for a high-res print for the next day’s shoot.

After about 10 hours, my portion was done… or so I thought.

 At dinner that evening the producer pulled me aside and asked if I’d take a later flight the next day so they could tape an interview with me.  It seems that all the computers and digital stuff looked pretty impressive on TV.  And, since I’d done a lot of (hoaxed) UFO photos and published calendars of alien and UFO images, I was perceived as something of an “expert.”  Sure thing!  Who wouldn’t want more TV face time?  Oh, so now I’m a UFO expert?  Careful what you get good at…

Tuesday morning we picked up a few shots missed on Monday and I did the sit-down interview.

The build was completed on Thursday allowing John to test flatten something on Friday.  We’re scheduled to make the Crop Circle sometime in August when the field rented from a farmer has grown in.

 
Well, who’d of figured?  One thing’s for sure, if I’d of spent my life shooting weddings no one at the Discovery Channel would have noticed my work and I would not have been called in to work on this.  So there’s something to be said about doing original work and following your own muse.  And like most commercial projects, I had no idea if I was the right guy for the job or if I could even pull it off in short-time  ---but that’s not a problem, like the builders I just smiled, said, “no problem” and figured it out as I went along.

Watch “Monster Garage” on the Discovery Channel October 31, 2005