United by a beaming grin and the gentle click of a camera, two Vancouverites created a magical moment on an otherwise dreary day.
But the photographer wasn't sure he'd ever get the chance to connect with the man in the photograph.
In a previous interview, artist Raphael Esiriel told Vancouver Is Awesome the workers were installing window panes and one of them "caught my eye...he was truly enjoying that moment and his smile was so contagious."
The construction site was the Vancouver Center II — a 33-storey downtown office located near the intersection of Georgia and Seymour.
It was a "tricky moment" because the workers were sliding massive glass windows off a rope from the outside and the worker below the one in the photograph had to catch it and install it without breaking anything, Esiriel explained. "[It's] not every day you see a guy so close to the edge, so high up."
The photographer added that he hoped the worker got to see the picture, noting that he thought he might have seen him taking some photos from another building "but there was no way to communicate."
The muse responds
After V.I.A. published the story about the worker with the "beaming smile," one of his colleagues reached out to say they recognized him in the photo.
Oscar Lopez, 32, has called Vancouver home for the past four years and worked in the window installation business for nearly three. While he now feels at home working up high, he didn't always feel comfortable navigating the soaring structures.
"You don't need to look down," he remarked in a phone interview. "You can feel it in your stomach...like a roller coaster if you look down."
While he can still feel a bit of a lurch when he looks down, he added that he wasn't really scared of traversing the tall buildings after about six months.
Lopez, who hails from Merida, the vibrant capital city of Mexico's Yucatán state, first came to Vancouver on a vacation and fell in love with the city. After he went to school, he got his first job installing windows at the Park Royal Towers in West Vancouver.
While he admits that the job is difficult (any kind of hit on the glass will break it and the wind can be a big issue), he credits a good relationship with his coworkers as the reason he enjoys his work.
"When the picture was taken it was rainy...but the job has to be done and I was happy," he said. "The hardest part is doing the layout. Once you have that, the rest is a piece of cake.
"Like a synchronized swimmer."
