the economy class nightmare

The Economy Class Nightmare, somewhere over the Andaman Sea, Malaysian Airlines

Leica M8, 50/1.4 Summilux-M ASPH

I hate traveling. Not because I'm a xenophobe but because it's routine to be crammed into a pressurized metal tube for twelve hours with so little personal space that crossing your legs might be constituted as an act of war. And the amount of moisture in the air might as well be zero, because my skin is like sandpaper by the time I arrive. I'm sure the cabin designers hold surveys to find out just how little space a human being is willing to pay to be crammed into before they start feeling claustrophobic and irritable, or worse still, demanding their money back. I flew 108 times in 2006. I woke up in not my own bed at least three times more often than I woke up in my own. Suffice to say, while you do get some decent (though rare) opportunities from a window seat, most of the time the window is so scratched and horrible that you might as well have been shooting with a pinhole.

To make this post remotely photography related, airplanes these days are so tight and poorly lit that a) I shot this from three seats and an aisle away with a 50mm, and b) it needed 1/30th at ISO 2500 f1.4.