I was doing mostly aerial photography of job sites and completed projects at that point. 85-90% of my livelihood disappeared overnight because all flight service businesses and general aviation airports closed. Stayed closed until the following February. Even when we could fly again there were triple and quadruple transponder checks between our plane and air traffic control in the region. Fully-armed SWAT team guys accompanied us from the office to the plane and searched everything on board and all camera gear before releasing us to taxi out and fly.

I’ve said a thousand times since that fateful day that the work I get to do was completely changed by adding several layers of security authorizations to the preliminary stages of all scheduled assignments. I can’t open my tripod and make photos on uptown streets without notifying and being checked by as many as four separate building security teams.

A final, notable change to what we do is that ever since 9/11/2001, we stopped forever from referring to ourselves as “shooters”.


[Post edited by PhotoHokieNC at 09/11/2020 12:41PM]