The world of today’s air traveler is a far cry from any jetset, glamorous notions of the ’50s. It is a miniature world of OCD rules and filthy public bathrooms. A place where TSA officials wear latex sanitation gloves to examine your passport (don’t know about you, but I sneeze on my passport all the time). It’s a realm of white noise and insulated thoughts, exaggerated anxiety and grey plastic bins. The threat level has recently been raised to orange for seven years now.
And then there is the dietary habits of today’s traveler. Short layovers squeezing lunches into a 15 minute window — cardboard ingredients forced down a throat at 10:15am.
There are worker bees who live this reality five to seven days a week. The burdens of the lifestyle are insane: shoes X-rayed twice a day, pockets stuffed with boarding pass stubs from yesterday, a two-minute wait for the next train to Terminal D. It is a life of 1,000 petty anxieties, each ticking the blood pressure up a notch each day.
And then there was this girl in pink, staring at the candy store, waiting with her dad for it to open. And it reminds you that you are going somewhere deliberately — for once. No agenda. No business suit to iron. Just a lot of shorts and T-shirts in your suitcase. You’re three hours from walking off the plane into the realm of Mexico, a place that is familiar and yet all together new, exhilerating and bizarre. And you put your camera and its rented tilt-shift lens back in the bag and go find an exchange counter to get some pesos to get you started. Oh yeah: now I remember why I like traveling.
I like that DOF miniaturizing effect, it really changes the perception, great pictures also