Photographer High Vis looks over the edge of the Mosaic building in downtown Dallas. Daniel Rockey Up There High Vis goes to frightening heights across downtown for his rooftop photo shoots. BY DANNY GALLAGHER W 88 e meet in front of the Mo- saic Building on North Akard Street on the side facing the DART train tracks. High Vis, the high-rise climbing, literally on the edge pho- tographer, is wearing a black hoodie, a snap- back ball cap with the Triple D logo and a black mask. He never takes off the mask. “In the beginning for sure, it was the whole ‘no face’ kind of thing,” says High Vis, the only name by which he wishes to be identified. “We weren’t breaking and enter- ing in general but the trespassing was illegal and I didn’t want to have any connection. I wanted them to just see my work on the high rises and things like that. I didn’t want to be that influencer in front of the camera holding a coffee everyday with selfies and stuff.” We’re let in by someone with the code to the building who takes to us to the elevators. A photographer with the Instagram name RidesLongAndHard pushes the button to the highest level the elevator will go. I try to joke with High Vis about how I’m glad we’re not using the stairs. He raises a finger to his masked mouth to cut me off before I can get to the punchline. He looks up and there’s a security camera in the corner of this rising metal box. Like a dope, the first thing I do is look at it for way too long. High Vis, his crew and I leave the eleva- tor and head toward a stairwell to access the roof. Thankfully, we have to head up only one set of them to gain roof access. High Vis pokes his head into the hallway and back into the stairwell. “There’s no ladder so we’re just gonna walk right out there,” High Vis says. “There’s an apartment next door. So let’s go towards that way.” High Vis opens the door to the outside and there’s just ... nothing. There’s a roof lower than the interior floor but from a few feet away, it just looks like a door from Nar- nia is open, except the door is taking us back to Dallas from 350 feet above the ground. “It’s not scary anymore,” High Vis says. “It used to be. It’s part fear and part adrena- line. I don’t wanna fall or anything. When- ever I’m on a rooftop, the first thing I wanna do is go to the ledge and look down.” High Vis is taking to the latest of one of God knows how many high-rise roofs to shoot photos and videos from some very precarious and breathtaking angles. This time, he’s on the roof of the Mosiac to shoot dancer and entrepreneur Lejin Elaha, who met High Vis while doing photography work for the Dallas Mavericks, where Elaha worked as a model and dancer. As Elaha dances to the sounds of “Stick” by Dream- ville. High Vis circles around him, each time he goes from one side to the other, High Vis gets dangerously close to the edge. Even though I’m nowhere near the edge of the building, my hand is spot welded to a pipe jutting out of a brick wall under the Mosaic sign, one that I’m hoping transports some- thing other than sewage. It grips tighter ev- ery time High Vis or one of his crew steps up to the edge or even sits down and lets their feet dangle over nothing but air. Every mus- cle tenses in my body like my brain is Taser- ing me when I even just try to think of what the view looks like from any remotely fatal angle. “I like the thrill of it,” Elaha says. “I’m a thrill seeker, and I like capturing the art and movement of it.” High Vis has been going to unauthorized heights all around downtown Dallas for more than eight years. He’s amassed thou- sands of followers and fans and is one of the first to bring “rooftopping” to the Dallas skyline, the trending term for urban explor- ers who find ways to access rooftops and document their most daring brushes with gravity in photos and videos. (This is not the same as those daredevils who use climbing gear to scale buildings’ exteriors.) “As far as walking like High Vis does, that’s not easy, but I can sit on the ledge all damn day,” says RidesLongAndHard as he prepares a new lens for his shots on the Mo- saic. “Just don’t lean forward if you don’t want to die.” High Vis’ only identifying info that he’s willing to release is the degree in graphic de- sign he received from the Art Institute of Dallas. He worked for a local agency and lived downtown, so he spent a lot of time walking around the heart of the city. He says he had some private photography accounts on Instagram but wanted something more public and eye catching. “That’s when I was trying to come up with a name for myself and the whole ‘High Vis’ thing,” he says. “I want to go with ‘High Visibility,’ but it was taken, and it kind of got dwindled down to ‘High Vis.’” High Vis’ first public photos started on the ground taken during his daily route to and from work. He says he started to notice accounts of photographers in New York and Los Angeles taking their cameras to places you usually don’t see on brochures. >> p10 MONTH XX–MONTH XX, 2014 MAY 5–11, 2022 DALLAS OBSERVER DALLAS OBSERVER | CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | MOVIES | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | FEATURE | SCHUTZE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS | CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | CULTURE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS dallasobserver.com dallasobserver.com
