I've loved photography for as long as I can remember. As a little kid, running around taking "pictures" with my toy camera. As a teenager, every birthday and Christmas gift was something photography related. As an adult I was anxious to go to school and earn a degree in photography. For a couple of years my only focus was gallery shows, workshops, seminars and gaining experience. Taking photos of everything, everywhere.
My second passion is music. As I built up my portfolio, I realized that's what I wanted to do. Be a music photographer. I wanted to figure out how to utilize stage lights to get the best photos. I wanted to travel all over and meet interesting people. I wanted to capture the mood of the music and the personalities of the musicians.
After I was done with school, I joined some local photography organizations to pay my dues. I got a lot of photo passes and developed contacts and found a mentor. Adam let me work as a (free) intern around LA for a few months and taught me everything that I needed to know about music photography. He introduced me to local bands and venues and decided that after three months of experience, he would test me to see how I did on a completely solo assignment. A traveling solo assignment.
I was psyched. Until I learned that I had a huge fear of flying. I had never flown before and the possibility of fear had never even crossed my mind until I walked into the airport. I stood frozen as I took in how huge the airport was, how many people there were and how many different signs with arrows there were any way I looked. A heat wave of panic washed over me and I thought there's no way I'm going to even attempt to navigate my way to my gate. I was too embarrassed to ask anyone for help. I just kept thinking that I could turn around, walk back out the door, go home and never answer another one of Adam's phone calls again.
But I realized how stupid that would be. I had come too far to throw everything away. Ghosting Adam wasn't an option and neither was calling him to tell him I was too scared to fly. Any small amount of reputation I'd built up would go out the door and I'd be looked at as a flake. This was my first actual assignment, and Adam had done me a huge favor by even getting it for me. He chose me for it over all of his other interns. And it was an amazing opportunity. Even though I wasn't getting paid for it, it was an all expenses paid trip just to essentially go see a concert and take pictures. And Adam had implied that if I did well, he might hire me for his company.
There was no way I could pass this up. I took some deep breaths, tried to be cool and kept telling myself that everything would be fine. Plane crashes weren't nearly as common as car crashes. It was more likely for me to have gotten into a car wreck on my way to the airport verses my plane actually crashing. I think. I thought I had heard that somewhere. I tried to keep thinking about that instead of Final Destination.
By the time I got to my gate and took a seat in the terminal I was covered in a cold nervous sweat. I briefly considered getting a drink to calm my nerves but I was too scared my nerves would betray me and I would throw up everywhere. So then I became a nervous wreck about other people judging me in addition to being scared of the flight. Everything was kind of a blur once they announced that it was time to board. Somehow though, I made it to my seat, buckled myself in and immediately leaned my head back and squeezed my eyes shut.
Once everyone had gotten in and settled and it was time to take off, I grabbed the arm rests and braced myself. I was tapping my leg up and down anxiously the whole time we were ascending. Once I felt the plane leveling out, I thought that I had relaxed a little bit but apparently not by much because Ed noticed. The plane was quiet when his voice cut through.
"Hey, you alright?" A British accent.
My eyes popped open, a little startled. I looked over to my left and saw a redheaded guy with rosy cheeks looking at me with concern. At first I could have mistaken him for a kid. Then I started to think he looked kind of familiar somehow. His seat was on the other side of the aisle and he was leaning towards me across his armrest. He raised his eyebrows in question, waiting for an answer.
"Yeah," I tried to brush it off like no big deal. "Just a little nervous."
"Oh, don't tell me... this is your first time flying?"
"How can you tell?" I laughed the question out, sarcastically.
He smiled at me for a moment, looking like he was trying not to laugh. Then he said, "You should probably take a breath."
I looked down and saw that I was still tapping my leg a bit and my knuckles were white, still gripping the armrest. I let out a deep and shaky breath as I released my death grip and shook my hands out to get the blood flowing again. I was a little bit embarrassed. I looked over at him shyly.
"Thank you."
He looked past me, noticing the seat next to me was empty. "Are you all by yourself?"
I turned to see where he was looking as if I had to confirm this with myself. "Yeah. It's for a work thing."
He laughed a little. "Do they know you're scared of flying? I hope they're paying you good money for this - you're white as a ghost."
"Uh, well, I'm actually not being paid at all. And no, they don't know." Clearly, I had to explain. "I'm doing this internship. My mentor picked me to do this project over all of the other interns, so yeah. It's a really great opportunity. And I couldn't exactly call him and tell him I was too scared to get on a plane, you know?"
"What's the internship?"
"Photography. Music photography. I'm going to shoot a concert."
His eyes got wide. "Really?? I'm a musician!" He sounded almost in disbelief as he put a hand to his chest.
I stared at him for a second. Was he trying to make a joke? Was he making fun of me? Then I recognized him.
"Oh!" I realized out loud, "you're that guy." I couldn't think of his name but I could picture him singing that one new song that had been playing everywhere. I searched my brain for the name of it. "The A Team! You're the guy that sings The A Team song."
"Well, I mean, it's Ed. Technically. But yes," he chuckled.
"Sorry," I shook my head. "I've heard your song, I just couldn't think of the name off the top of my head. I'm Sam."
We reached across the aisle and shook hands. We had both already forgotten the fact that the seat next to me was empty. Ed nodded towards it.
"Should I come over there?"
"Oh, yeah, sure," I smiled. I looked up at the seat belt sign and saw that it had gone off. I hadn't even realized when that happened.
Ed grabbed some of his stuff and came over to plop down in the seat next to me. "I've got to say it's a bit odd to get recognized. It's sort of mad, if I'm honest."
Sarcastically I said, "Well at least you're still able to fly on a normal plane without causing too much chaos." I jokingly looked around the plane. It was quiet and not very crowded at all.
He got the joke and nodded, "You're very funny."
Suddenly the plane jolted and rocked a little bit. I let out a yelp and grabbed my armrests again. I drew my legs up and crossed them on my chair and squeezed my eyes shut. All of my previous panic came back instantly. I twitched a little when I felt Ed's hand on my arm.
"It's okay," his voice was soothing. "It's just a little turbulence." I shook my head back and forth in response. I didn't believe him. I knew this plane was doomed. "Oh c'mon, you were doing so good!"
Nervous laughter. "Yeah, well, I wasn't thinking about it because we were talking."
"Here, I have an idea."
I opened my eyes to see him digging in his pocket for something. He pulled out his phone and started going through it while absentmindedly taking off the headphones around his neck. He looked over at me, holding out the headphones. I took them from him and put them on.
He smiled at me and explained, "Distraction." He went to hit the Play button but stopped. "I mean, if you want. It's some of my other songs." He looked a little bit embarrassed, realizing he had just forced his music on me. I couldn't help but laugh. It was cute.
"Play the songs," I nodded.
"Okay. If you insist," he laughed.
I curled up in my seat and closed my eyes, leaning my head on my hand. I listened to a few songs and was pleasantly surprised at how good his singing voice was. There was only one more small jolt of turbulence to which I opened my eyes and found Ed asleep in his chair. He was leaning away from me but his arm was laying across his armrest and across mine too and his hand was dangling down and touching the blanket I had over my legs. I thought maybe he did that on purpose so he could feel if I jumped or started to freak out again and it made me smile. I tried to be noiseless and still as I took his headphones off, but he sensed me moving and opened his eyes.
"Shit, sorry," I whispered.
He sat up normally. "No, it's fine. I wasn't asleep. Just kind of dozing."
I handed his headphones back. "It's good. I like it."
"Yeah? You're not just saying that?"
"No, I really do like it."
We both smiled at the same time and sort of caught eyes for a second. It was a...weird moment to have with a complete stranger. Especially one who I had not thought was attractive at all. The opposite, really. I had thought he looked goofy, almost in a little dorky kid way. I had always cringed at redheads. But now? He smelled really good and his accent was kind of hot. And now that I could see his eyes a lot better I realized how pretty they were.
He cleared his throat and broke the moment. "Uh, so what about you? Can I see your work?"
"Oh, yeah. Of course."
I snapped out of whatever little trance I was in and grabbed my carry-on bag to get a portfolio sample out. I always had some physical prints and copies with me in my messenger bag when I was shooting just in case I got the chance to meet some contacts or advertise my work. My full portfolio was online. But for now Ed and I went through these, me explaining what or who each one was and him asking lots of questions and giving lots of compliments.
I knew he was mainly just trying to keep me distracted so I wouldn't think about the flight, but I didn't mind. I was enjoying him. He was super nice and super funny and really down to earth. He was actually pretty charming and I was surprised that I felt bummed when the flight was over. Because that meant saying bye to him. I could have easily talked to him for the rest of the night. There was something about him that was very comforting.
We walked off the plane and into the terminal together. He walked me to the baggage area so we could wait for our stuff together. I kinda hoped it would take a while so we could keep talking. Ed noticed something behind me and abruptly took off. Confused, I turned to watch him and saw that he had gone up to one of those guys who walks around randomly selling flowers. He took some cash out of his pocket and picked one, which he brought over to me.
"You did it! You survived your first flight!"
"Yeah," I laughed as he handed me the flower. "Thanks to you. I don't know what I would've done if you hadn't been there to distract me."
He smiled and shrugged. Then his eyes went to the baggage carousel. "Wicked, mine came out already!" He ran over to get his and mine were right behind his.
"Damn, that was fast."
"I know, you usually never get your bags this fast. You're like a lucky charm."
There was a second of awkward silence where neither of us knew what to say next. I HATE that feeling and can't ever let it go on for more than a moment.
"Well. Thank you again. It was nice meeting you. Good luck with everything."
"Yeah, you too. Maybe someday you'll get to shoot me, yeah? At massive sold out stadium shows."
We both laughed at that far-fetched chance. "Definitely, yes," I nodded.
For some reason we were both acting really weird and didn't hug or shake hands again or exchange any information. Things had suddenly turned a bit tense and uncomfortable. We said goodbye to each other pretty quickly and then headed our separate ways.