What a great time to travel by air!!?? The day after the terror alert plot was uncovered I flew out to LA from Heathrow last Friday. Everything must now go in the hold – No hand luggage whatsoever. This sucks if you are a photographer. I checked my insurance was up to date packed my Peli cases which I haven’t used for ages and photographed all my bags so when they go missing I can at least have a picture to show the lost baggage dude in LA what my bags look like. Virgin airlines advised all passengers to arrive at least 3 hours before flight time. My flight was at 3pm so at 12pm I entered terminal 3 which looked more like a refuge camp. I was quickly turned around and told that flight VS007 was not checking in until at least 2pm and to please leave the terminal because of over-crowding. After a very long wait I finally made it past check-in and through security. It felt odd walking through the airport with no camera bag. At the departure gate I had my Times newspaper confiscated and was frisked until they found my chewing gum which was also seized. I finally boarded the plane at 5:45pm. 12 hours later and I am in LA. Well technically I am in LA but sitting in front of a baggage carrousel with 300 other passengers. Alarm bells rang when I entered the baggage reclaim and they announced that water and energy biscuits would be available at carousel No.7! For some bizarre reason all bags from the UK had to be re-screened before you could leave the airport. Even the security marshals in the terminal told us this made no sense because once out in the street you could put anything back into your bags. 4 and a half hours later my bags did appear and I finally escaped from LAX airport. Some 23 hours in total, travelling waiting and riding in taxi’s. Probably the safest day ever to travel by plane but definitely one of the longest!
It was pretty much the same on the return journey but with more guns and soldiers in desert clothing over-reacting to everything! Unbelievably my camera equipment survived both journeys and I will live to fly another day, but I did lose one flip-flop!
Just finished shooting 2 covers which look great. The first half of one of the covers was shot at the Wacken, festival in Germany and the rest in the US. Hopefully when pieced together it should look like they were all together!
Metal Edge magazine cover I shot at Download. Corey from Slipknot is pretty chilled at the moment. This was a very quick shoot!
