Traveling Photographer

It is getting harder and harder for photographers to travel. I had a tiny taste of that this past week.

I didn't take much equipment....just a DSLR loaded with one lens and a Holga camera. But then I had a card reader and battery charger...in one direction. Coming back home, I had a new expert trackball mouse, a new film holder for the scanner, 220 ml ink cartridges all in one suitcase that was opened and inspected after I checked my baggage....but the nice guys at the Transportation Security Administration left me a note in my bag that they had done that and that if I would have had it locked, they would have broken the lock and inspected it.

AND, I was bringing back about 65 rolls of 120 film which I didn't want to go through the x-ray machine when I went through security. I had taken the film out of boxes and put it in plastic bags. All of this was to no avail. They insisted that I put it in one of the plastic boxes going through the scanner. Most studies say that one pass through the scanner for low ISO film shouldn't affect it. Yeah, I know that the regulations also say that you can ask for hand inspection and that they should comply but I was intimidated.

Basically I was traveling with almost nothing but today I read this story of a professional photographer traveling with lots of cameras and lighting equipment. Makes you wonder about the next time you have a fully loaded camera bag when you are flying the friendly skies.