Giving Varian Tech a Heart Attack

Back in the day, I did a lot of work for Varian Oncology out of Palo Alto, California.
Some of the projects required travel to hospitals across different states. One particular shoot took place at a hospital in Oregon, where we were photographing a newly installed linear accelerator machine.

If you’re not familiar, linear accelerators, they require an incredible amount of electrical power to operate, and in some cases, they can emit small amounts of radiation. Because this was a new installation, a technician was on-site to monitor the system during our shoot.

Unfortunately, something wasn’t functioning properly. The tech had to remove the machine’s outer shell to troubleshoot the issue, and he was visibly nervous as he worked his screwdriver carefully between a maze of wires. I could tell he was on edge and quite concerned. Understandably so, given the power (and possible radiation) involved.
Unfortunately my mischievous sense of humor got the better of me.

This was long before the digital era, back when we still shot everything on film and didn’t do any retouching. That meant using extremely bright and powerful strobe lighting systems. LED lights didn’t exist yet. At least not for photography or video. Each of my four power packs delivered about 2,000 watt-seconds of light, for a total of roughly 8,000 WS. In other words, every time we fired the strobes, it was like lightning going off inside the room.

I waited patiently as the tech focused intently on the one problem area deep inside the machine. The moment his screwdriver touched the right spot – POP! I fired all the strobes at once and let out a loud scream for good measure.

The poor guy jumped halfway across the room. It was priceless. And yes, I’ll admit, a little cruel. But once he realized what had happened, the entire crew burst out laughing. Even the tech eventually cracked a smile, though he was sweating bullets and needed a 15-minute break to calm down. To make up for it, I treated him, and the whole crew, to a well deserved dinner that evening.

There’s no way I could pull off a stunt like that today. In the corporate world, I’d probably be out of a job before dessert was served. But back then, people could laugh at a good prank. Even the tech tried to get me back later, and we ended up sharing a few more laughs at dinner helped along, of course, by plenty of wine.

In the end, the shoot went perfectly, the images turned out great, and the client got exactly what they needed, and the tech when home safely to his wife. With a great story to share.