Now don't get the wrong idea. I didn't start burning clutches the moment I hit the ground in Spain. There were a lot of other things to do first. Barcelona is a blur. Traffic, staircases, the sound of clapping and shouting, a string of softboxes to be set up and taken apart, and the computerized voice of the GPS box endlessly intoning directions in broken english. In one hundred meters turn left. Turn left. Recalculating. In seven hundred meters enter roundabout, then turn right...

caracterdesign drives transferred and I into the city late Tuesday afternoon. We've left Bruce and Garth in the care of our favorite Teutonic Maltesean, Thomas Pullicino, in Frankfurt. Ten hours of flight delay for "mechanical reasons" in Calgary mean Bruce has already missed the Aperture launch at Photokina, but what are you going to do. There's still time for Ratstuben to get them to Stuttgart for the Deutscher Multimedia Kongress. The important thing is, after weeks of cross-Atlantic work, booking locations, transferring money, translating sponsorship agreements, and trying to find a bus for sixty, we're in Spain. Eva is thrilled — because we haven't seen each-other since Ljubljana, but mostly because she finally has some help. We have three days before the biggest iStockalypse ever kicks off.



Wednesday afternoon: Brianna and Eva sit on the bed in the first floor room of Hotel Anglí, our ultramodern design-magazine boutique hotel. Minibar already blown open, ashtrays all full. They throw a ten foot long taped-together scroll of coffee-stained model profiles back and forth at each other. The list is the product of countless work hours. Eva and Lluís, along with Maica and her husband Jaume, have been in touch with every available model on the Iberian peninsula. We also have a page of profiles from our friend Lorrenzo Herrera, whose Fotopunta agency will provide the lion's share of our talent.
Che, sirimo, and I stand in the doorway, trying to look helpful, but not too helpful. Eventually Brianna looks up and says "You know, you guys don't really need to be here..."
*poof*
We meet subman, track5, and casarsa downtown, to make the most of will turn out to be our only full day off in Barcelona. So; cerveza, paella, and talking American tourists into making human pyramids for us. "You know, pyramids," explains Casarsa to a bemused woman from Phoenix, "Like in Egypt." We bounce from cafe to cafe and mostly just talk shop; inspection team gossip, site jabber, why so-and-so needs serious banning now; that kind of thing. You'd never know from the outside that the five of us have never met in person before; after all, we work together.



Angel Cabezuelo flags us down from across the street Thursday afternoon. Our stylist is anxious to shop. He already has an arm-full of clothes; by the time the day is finished, we'll need a pack mule to carry them all. At the giant Zara shop on Gran Via, Transferred and Angel all the clothes we can carry: overcoats, dresses, blouses, bluejeans, handbags, and shoes. "We want glamour, we want travel, we want jet-setting," Brianna tells me. I find exactly one hat. We reach the front of the line with what's probably three thousand euros worth of clothes, and a letter explaining that we'd like to bring them all back four days from now, after they've been worn all over town by a rotating cast of forty. After a tense read and re-read, we're cleared. Steam puffs out of transferred's credit card and we head out with about eight bags full of clothes.

I spot Alija in the costume shop, across the floor, while Angel contemplates felt wolf heads and red hoods. Mariana and Armando are excited to meet other iStockers for the first time; I'm excited to meet the people who've made my favorite images on the site. They help us carry our mountain of rented clothes out to a taxi stand before zipping off on their mopeds. Over the next few days we're going to be really thankful for those mopeds; Mariana and Armando are our crack errand commando team, and bail us out of more than a few sticky spots.

Back at Anglí a crowd has formed — new iStockers and old friends. (It's amazing how close you can feel to people you've only met for four days in Slovenia.) At the nearest available table for ten we order in three different languages. I catch up with Mlenny and Elkor, who have both been to two more iStock events since I saw them last. Alex can't wait to get back to London for more shooting and tries to coax Elena into coming along. "But I've already used up all my vacation time!" she says.

Bruce, Thomas and Garth arrive after their marathon all-day drive across five countries. The Maître d won't budge on closing the kitchen though. We meet them back at the hotel a little later on. JJRD and Helenecanada have shown up, and we all pile into Eva and Lluís' room. It takes maybe eight minutes before the phone rings with noise complaints. Which is just as well, because our kick-off time tomorrow is coming up fast.





So, getting back to the smoke coming out from the Fiat hood. We've barely made it to the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona in time for Bruce's opening address Friday morning. But we have lights (two vans full, more on that soon) and we have a crowd. Everyone is here; we pause while running up and down the stairs to say hello to old friends and meet others for the first time. The CCCB is an incredible building, but right now, it seems entirely made of staircases. There just isn't time to properly pause and say hello (and the tragedy of the trip is that there never really is. So, belated hello, everybody.)

After Bruce has welcomed everyone, we have a presentation by Ronald Plevier from Getty Images. He covers a lot in a brief slideshow: creative research, shoot planning, and the general state of the image industry. People's eyes light up; everybody wants more. It's exciting to hear about the logistical details of massive, expensive shoots involving hundreds of people, then look down at the freshly-printed schedules in our hands and think about how we'll be spending the next four days.

We hand out sketchbooks, and Che gives a presentation on composition planning. Bruce, Thomas, Simon and I are already out the door. There are too many lights, clothes, and models to drive across the madness of Barcleona traffic, and not enough vehicles. Bruce tosses the keys at me. "Get the van out of the parking garage! The bus is going to get here in twenty minutes." I probably ought to tell him I haven't driven a standard in ten years. Simon comes along for the ride. We spend twenty minutes in absolute panic trying to get the van through three blocks of the Ramblas, stalling at every corner and incline. The good news is, for the rest of the weekend, Thomas Pullicino can always keep track of us. If he ever loses us in traffic, he just has to pull over and wait for the smell of fried clutch to work its way up the street.


Laberint d'Horta is incredible, and yes, you can get lost in there. The hedge walls are shaggy and a little bit untrimmed, adding to the odd feeling of the place. Angel leads the models off to dress while we unpack our two crates full of lights. Everyone is itchy to start shooting.

One by one our fairy-tale characters emerge and the photographers get to work. It's surreal, moving through the maze. You'll be alone in the hedges, then come around a corner to find Alice patiently waiting while the reflector is held just right. Little Red Riding Hood runs endlessly down a green aisle, the wolf stopping to have his felt head readjusted, photographers directing her on each new escape. "This time, more screaming; really scream!" Cinderella climbs the huge stone steps over and over, the yellow gown stark against the granite.

A smaller crowd takes Snow White up to the emerald-skinned reflecting pool at the top of the grounds. There's a nervous moment while she's convinced to stand on a railing that's waaaay too narrow for her six-inch platform heels. Subman thinks about it for a minute, then jumps into the pool for the perfect reflector angle.


The Barcelona Velodrome is literally right beside the labyrinth. Photographers start to wander over in twos and threes as the afternoon wears on. Cyclists zip around a hard wood track on a steep forty five degree angle. In the middle there's a football pitch, and a team in the process of suiting up. A little black make-up for simulated scruffiness, and matching golden cleats to catch the light just so, and we have the perfect stock soccer team. Photographers kick balls into the crowd, and the models are always a step ahead; hanging upside down from the crossbar, diving across the pitch, reaching for perfectly still soccer balls in fictitious movement. WillSelarep frames a few perfect sports images. Track5 takes Jose, our hairy-shouldered character model super-hero, to the net for some simulated goalie action.

We have to clear the field way too soon; it feels like we've just arrived. Fortunately, as we pack up the lights on the soccer field, our cycling team turns up. Cyclists from the Federació Catalana de Ciclisme in bright yellow uniforms start to lap the track. Total motion blur action. Again, there just isn't time; we've barely set a strobe up at the head of the track when it's time to strike and catch the bus.



Alba has already been through a lot today. She's with us on behalf of the good people at Bach Imports, to help with the nearly 30,000 euros worth of lighting gear they've lent us. (It fills two massive road cases, each big enough that it requires a whole van to move it. Thomas Pullicino, your iStock Medal of Valour is in the mail.) Alba helps us set up and operate the equipment — and does her best to make sure we don't abuse anything too badly. So far today, we've dragged her onto buses, left her in stairwells to watch gear, broken one umbrella, panicked when there weren't enough sync cables, and generally alarmed her. But the sight of subman lowering a complete light kit – tirpod, Bowens' head, massive softbox – over the side of a double decker bus to bitter's outstretched arms down below may be one step too far. Fortunately, she takes it in stride.

We do our best to rotate photographers up and down, while the models crowd around the front under the lights. Che holds the softbox steady, one eye open for low-hanging tree branches, stop lights — there are more than a few close calls, but no lights, models, or Australians get lost over the side. A crew from TendenciasTV films the whole thing. We stop for the fountain lightshow in Montjuïc and set a record for the most colourfully back-lit silhouetted images anyone ever shot in 15 minutes.

The bus trip stretches on into the night – turns out there are a lot of sights to see in Barcelona. We pull over within site of the Torre Agbar ("We call it 'Barcelona's Penis'", explains the tour guide). "Everybody stay on the bus!" someone says, not loudly enough. Half the photographers get off the bus. "Herding cats," Phfft keeps saying to himself, "It's like herding cats." We get everyone back on the bus and send JJ and Thomas out with their tripods for a logo placement shot of the Bus Turistic against the backdrop of the famous building. We slow down for the Sagrada Familia, and finish off the night with two more Gaudí buildings. By now it's been more than twelve hours of shooting and everyone is dead on their feet. Fortunately, the bus driver is good enough to drop us off at our hotel.




On the Catamaran Orsom the models slip into swimsuits and slather on sunscreen. We chug through the harbor Saturday morning and photographers set about the difficult, gruelling, and completely unrewarding job of taking pictures of gorgeous people in swimwear on a boat. The trials we make people endure.

DHuss deliberately turns his tripod the other way and soaks up the life of the harbour. Sailing ships, rigging, submarines, diesel tugs, rowing teams; he gets it all. Out on the mesh front of the boat people break out the props, bikini tug-of-war being the popular favourite. There are even a few minutes to lean on the side, in the sun, and do nothing. Only a few minutes though.


As far as jobs go, I'd recommend standing on a beach holding a reflector over swimsuit models for an afternoon to anyone. Seriously, it's great. I bake red as a stop sign in the Mediterranean while the models splash in the surf. This is as good a time as any to talk about how fantastic our squad of models from Fotopunto are all weekend. Lorrenzo Herrera has put together a terrific bunch for us. They are tireless in the face of sweltering heat, cramped vans, stairs, waiting, dehydration, and shouting event organizers. They are all great in front of the camera — anticipating where the photographer is going and playing along, picking up on scenes, ideas, storylines, with that perfect, intuitive leap that makes a great model. And they look really good. We spend the afternoon dunking them in the sea over and over and over, blinding them with reflectors, washing them softboxes. Casarsa meters and directs. We barely rescue the power-pack from a massive unexpected wave. The occasional tourist wanders through the scene, completely baffled.



A few hundred yards away, the rest of us wait in the lobby of the tallest building for 200 miles in any direction. The security at Mapfre Tower is iron clad. Photographers leave backpacks, jackets, bags — everything but cameras, before being escorted, ten at a time, into the elevator. No shooting anything.

They send groups of ten up to the roof for fifteen minute intervals, and these ain't no loosey-goosey iStockalypse 15 minutes either. Security guards stare at their watches, then blow their whistles right on cue and escort people down off the roof. Well, except for subman and track5, who are busy trying to keep the softbox from taking off hang-glider style from the rooftop. The sun bakes down on the concrete helicopter pad, and the models, decked out in heavy business clothes and pancake makeup, slowly melt into fashionable puddles. The view is stunning, though; the entire city spread out underneath us, every single landmark visible. Agmit gets a killer shot of the city. No one blows over the side.



We've all seen the photos of the Castellers of Catalonia. But the live event is stunning. We sit on a grassy slope just off the expansive plaza outside the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya. A small crowd of men, women and children in matching red and black mill around on the flat, bare field. The crowd tightens into a knot to the accompaniment of a shrill horn and snaredrum, the largest, oldest men in the centre. They slap each-others' shoulders and take their time, gripping, tightening themselves into a dense mass. Then the next row just rises out of the middle, younger men, up onto the shoulders of the men below. Once they're sure of their own formation, the next group of smaller, younger teenagers moves up. It's like a Russian doll opening vertically, each layer a generation younger, until finally the children crown the tower.



Some of us move around for a better camera angle, and some of us just stand there with our mouths open, too bowled over to think about pictures. Each time the youngest child, can't be more than six years old, scrambles up the outside of the tower, using those belts as hand and footholds, we all hold our breath. They race right up to the top, pull themselves up onto the highest set of shoulders (which at that height are other kids not much older than themselves), then raise one hand to let us know its done and zip, slide down the whole human structure in a blink.


At the Hivernacle del parc de la ciutadella, the sound inside is already deafening. On a long, hollow wooden stage the Somorrostro dancers stamp their feet, clap out the time, and move in a teal blue and black Flamenco blur. Men sit on wooden boxes, slap the sides in a pulsing rhythm that carries the guitar and the astounding voice pouring out of the singer.
"They love this," Jaume explains to me. "They dance all day long, whether any one is watching or not. You won't be able to stop them."



There are no lights in the building other than our strobes, which flash brighter and brighter as the sun sinks outside. Soon photographers are squinting at the backs of their cameras in the dark, but no one wants to step away from the scene, and the dancers show no signs of ever stopping. Finally, it gets so gloomy that we wonder if we'll be able to even pack the lights up, and we have to tell everyone to stop. The musicians keep right on while we fold up the softboxes in the dark. Then Garth shows up with bottled water and beer and we realize we're exhausted.



After yesterday's fourteen-hour marathon and today's experiments in sunstroke, we're all completely beat. Everybody is raw from hours of shooting, moving, and shouting, and the only thing that's going to soothe those nerves is a drink. We take an extended ramble through Barcelona's heart of tourism darkness, and probably shouldn't get into much detail. We give up on finding a bar to sit twenty and settle for warm cans of something or other from street vendors. Eventually, we all find taxis home. Although a few of us require more than one to complete the trip.






The phone wakes me up way later is good for me on Sunday. "Andrew, it's 11! Everyone is here!" In retrospect, it's probably a good thing that mlenny and I couldn't get that final round last night...

We have groups all over the hotel. Other guests do their best to do go about their days in the thick of it. Models drape themselves in designer chairs, chat on cell phones in stairwells, and lounge beside the pool under the flash of speedlights and strobes. We work our way into the conference room and hungry stock-shooters tear the place apart in a "business board room corporate" frenzy. Our stylist Angel gets in front of the camera; he's a natural, playing any part that's suggested. I run out to the pool and find Subman underwater. Lucky bastard. He poses for a few pool shots, tracks down a towel, and then gets back to helping with the lights. Alba is immune to any shock by now and doesn't even blink at the sight of a half-naked, towel-clad South African moving battery packs from room to room.



The lift at Hotel Anglí just isn't fast enough to keep up with everything. Garth and I are up and down the stairs like hung-over circuit trainers. The hotel staff get wider-eyed at each new preposterous request. Do you have a socket wrench set? How many bottles of water are there in the hotel, and can I buy all of them? Is there another conference room? When we finally pack everything out to the waiting bus we half expect them to throw our baggage out after us.


Everyone has split into groups by the time Garth and I catch up at the airport (something to do with the wrong kind of screwdriver and a printer the size of a piano — you really don't want to hear about it...) We suss out the layout of Terminal C: moving sidewalks, elevated parking garages, luggage trolleys. Brianna makes a face. "Suitcases! We forgot the suitcases!" Garth sighs and heads back to the van. We turn the iStockers loose on the airport.



Our lighting crew is a well-oiled machine by now. We can set up three softboxes faster than you can make an ATM withdrawl. Ken Cameron breaks out a reflective vest and massive set of headphones. "I've got a pilot's license," he explains, "Thought this stuff might come in handy."

We do our best to move fifty six photographers through four stations in the few hours we have. Half way through striking the lights it dawns on us; that's it. No more shooting. Tomorrow is all editing. Sixty exhausted photographers and models stagger on to a bus only to hear the air conditioning is broken. A riot is averted when we figure out how to open the emergency exit hatches in the roof. We're dropped off at Hotel Illa Husa, where JJRD takes questions in a Live Scout session, with the inspectors providing the secret mysteries of iStockphoto success. (And you thought these events were just all about drinking.) Back at Anglí Alba and I inventory the lights. Remarkably, everything is there, and very little of it is broken.





"In the history of art," JJRD tells the crowd on Monday, "When we talk about artists, we don't talk about all the works they ever made; we talk about the work they decided was good enough to show us. A great artist knows what to show us, and more importantly, what to leave out."
We sit on the folding chairs in the Hotel Illa conference room with our computers, not our cameras. Everyone has a goal for the day: pick the two best images of the weekend, and process them as quickly as possible for tonight's gallery show at the Teatre Nacional. The mood is good. No running, no shouting, no stairs or cabs, just a day of photoshopping and, more importantly, the chance to see what we've all been doing. We have ten iMacs on loan from Apple, and move people on in groups for one on one help selecting and perfecting the weekend's work. Subman, casarsa, Peeterv, and Track5, phfft and ranplett, JJRD and helenecanada, tomazl, transferred, caracterdesign, sirimo, chemc: that's a good fifth of the inspection team. For newbies and older hands alike its a windfall.



Everybody is blown away by everyone else's work. Ferrantraite brings up his files and our eyes bug out of our heads. "Don't change a thing!" we all say. Transferred helps mandygodbehear with her fairy-tale leg collage. Helenecanada and elkor get the perfect black-and-white bus reflection. And the whole time Delius attracts computer problems like a magnet; Bridge crashes, Photoshop crashes, then the whole machine freezes solid. By the time he finally has a computer working and an image to edit, we're all pointing to our watches and getting ready to pack up the room. He pulls off a seamless two-image splice in the last few minutes with a little help from phfft, and we're set. Bitter gets the images loaded onto his USB key, we pack up the iMacs, and it's time to head to the Theatre and show off what we've done.


In the massive space of the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya our images fill the room very nicely, thank you. Models, sponsors, and photographers wander from screen to screen, gasping over their champagne with each new image.

"We're seeing what we all saw this weekend," someone says to me, "But what we're really seeing is her vision," pointing to caracterdesign. Eva and Lluís, after weeks of phone calls, meetings, late nights, emails, panic, planning, replanning, running, and otherwise knock-down exhausting work, stand at the centre of the room, finally calm, and happy. It's true; the room is full of their strength of their vision and the fruit of their labour.



Bitter gets the crowd to quiet down for one last time — to thank and congratulate everyone for their hard work and great images, and make a final, sad announcement. It turns out Barcelona is going to be Brianna's last event. After bringing her vision of photographer collaboration to seven different cities on two continents, after overseeing the creative development of iStockphoto for years, transferred is moving on. The news sends a ripple of sadness through the crowd, and punctuates the twinge that comes at the end of every iStockalypse. We'll all be going home soon. But there's still time tonight for another stop.



We go to a place called the Sidecar. No more schedules, no more listening to me talk in my "iStock voice". Everybody gets soggy. The DJ plays The Stooges and Maodesign knows all the words. Judging from the photos, we had a good time.



At the Eurocar rental office they don't smell burnt metal, or notice the dent in the back tail light. We have less luck returning the Zara clothes (hope those shoes fit, Bri.) We say goodbye to Angel over an espresso in his father's bar. There's time for a forty-five minute visit to the Picasso museum. After a week of interupting photographers and packing up the lights before they've finished their shot, it's probably fitting that I get pulled away from the Las Meninas room after exactly five minutes.

We say goodbye in increments - a few last meals with Eva and Luis, and the chance to finally meet their daughters. Sirimo takes a crowd out for "one last drink", and miraculously makes his flight the next day. Puchi and Thomas find enough room in the car for Bruce and Brianna and head off for Nice. In the end it's just Che and I, two guys from opposite ends of the planet, improbably meeting for the first time here on the Mediterranean. Both of us too exhausted for anything more than one last beer. But it's not too bad; after all, we'll see each other at work next week.




Credits
First of all, thank you to everyone who sent us candid, behind-the-scenes kind of shots, especially Elkor, laartist, AtomicSparkle, and DHuss. Dave has a whole page full of his shots from around the city: check them out, they're great.

Thank you also to track5 for helping fill a few gaps in my memory.

Please visit iStockalypse.com to see the complete list of event sponsors. Very special thanks to Turisme Barcelona, Lorenzo Herrera, and our Barcelona team: caracterdesign and Lluís, Maica and Jaume, and Alija and Armando. Thank you to all the iStock staff who we put to work on their vacations, and Thomas Pullicino for all the driving and comic relief.
You can see all the images from the Barcelona iStockalypse in this lightbox, managed by Izusek.
Images used in this article:
Gaudi rooftop detail by Sirimo
Barcelona baroque labyrinth by Brosa
sexy legs by mandygodbehear
Goalkeeper of football by WillSelarep
Party Bus by nikada33
blurred curve by track5
Cuando este Chico te mira... by WillSelarep
happy party girls and beach girls by mlenny
Couple at the Beach by Casarsa
Summer Sunshine - Brianna by AtomicSparkle
Castellers hands by maodesign
Flamenco dancers by Brasil2
Flamenco passion and Urban beauty by elkor
Vida de astronauta by Alija
Girl in Hallway by jimd_stock
In the dark by track5
Man with computer by izusek
Sheriff on the beach by Casarsa