Photographing on Top of the World

In order to view this feature, you must download the latest version of flash player here.

#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}

There are few things more satisfying to a photographer than taking a camera where few professionals have been before. But there aren’t many places like that left on Earth.

Joe McNally seeks out these rare spaces. Recently, he made it to the very top of the tallest building in the world â€" the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

The good news for adventurous photographers is that, while Mr. McNally may have beaten you to the top of the tallest artificial structure in the world, there will probably be a different tallest building next year, and he is more than willing to share his climbing and shooting secrets.

He has relentlessly pursued opportunities to photograph hard-to-reach urban areas, going to the top of the transmission antennas on the World Trade Center and the Empire State Building. Now he has gone even higher â€" about 2,700 feet high. And he made a very popular Instagram photo while there.

So how did Mr. McNally photograph his feet half a mile above Dubai?

First, he rode elevators to the 163rd floor, where he was already much higher than the Empire State Building. Then, he climbed about 300 feet of interior stairs to reach the tower section of the building. In 95-degree heat, he put on a safety harness and climbed straight up a ladder inside a narrow, sauna-like tube for another 450 feet.

“I had my cameras with carabiners that are hooked to my harness, and I put wire through my straps and into the grommet so there’s no possibility of a strap breaking or anything dropping,” he said.

But wait, there’s more.

With help from two safety climbers accompanying him, Mr. McNally squeezed into a tiny bucket. Finally, at the very top of the structure, he got out of the bucket and stood where he wanted to photograph. The problem was that he was standing on what he wanted to photograph.

So, he used his safety ropes to lever backward and push himself off the building to get a wide view.

“I just had them slack me out, slack me out, slack me out on the safety ropes so the only thing touching the building at that point was my feet, and then I was backwards at about 45 degrees, and then I pushed off,” he said.

Surprisingly, this was fairly safe, because the rope was tied securely to the building. But then came the part that made him nervous.

“I’m standing on the railing of the bucket with my iPhone, the only thing not tethered to me, and it’s slippery,” he said. “I made a couple of snaps, sent it out on Instagram, and by the time I got back down on the ground, that silly little picture had gone all over the place, which was kind of cool, but also kind of an indication of where we are photographically.”

Mr. McNally, 60, had a successful career well before smartphones and Instagram. He is best known for his “Faces of Ground Zero: Portraits of the Heroes of September 11, 2001” project. To create 246 nine-by-four-foot images, he used the largest Polaroid camera ever made, the Moby C. The prints and the book, published by Life, helped raise money for public schools in Lower Manhattan after the attacks.

Joe McNally Billy Ryan and Mike Morrisey, firefighters who arrived at the World Trade Center just after the second tower collapsed. From the series “Faces of Ground Zero,” featuring images made by the largest Polaroid camera in the world.

He has worked in more than 50 countries and photographed cover stories for Time, Sports Illustrated, Life, National Geographic, Fortune and The New York Times Magazine.

Mr. McNally is drawn to tall structures and says he might attempt to be the first to photograph from atop the spire of the new Freedom Tower. But first, he hopes to go back to the top of the Burj Khalifa to work on a story he discovered.

“They have crews of 30 to 40 guys, some of whom are from the Himalayas area, and their full-time job is cleaning the upper tower of that building because it gets so much sand impact and grit,” he said.

There is a lot of sand in Dubai, so it is a Sisyphean effort. By the time the workers finish cleaning all 163 floors, they must start over again in a constantly repeating cycle.

Sort of like Mr. McNally.

Joe McNally Mr. McNally on top of the World Trade Center, September 1980.

Follow @JoeMcnallyPhoto, @JamesEstrin and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Lens is also on Facebook.