The Port of Los Angeles and its workers have been involved in a 9 month battle over wages, benefits, and a new contract. Photographer Mike Kelley of Los Angeles posted these photos to Imgur this morning from a weekend excursion aboard a chopper far out in the Pacific Ocean, where cargo ships are idling, waiting for the port to re-open. The photos show dozens of ships waiting for their turn to come into port, and even more trucks waiting to unload cargo. Click for larger images...
The photographer had this to say about the project (via Reddit):
I'm a photographer who is fascinated by industry/architecture, and have been keeping an eye out for images of the labor dispute. I haven't seen much that is very noteworthy, so I decided to charter a helicopter and go make some pictures for myself. The absolute size at play here is just mind-bending. For most of these shots were were miles and miles out at sea, with huge swells below, which you can see in the photos.
I was harnessed into the helicopter and we flew around with the doors off for a couple hours, getting as close as we could, and then going as high as we could to change it up. I wish the pictures did a better job of showing what it was like to be that far out from land with the wind howling, waves roaring, etc. It was really something else for me, since most of my assignments are based over land. It took about 15 minutes at 80kts to get out so far, to capture all of the ships.I don't really claim to know anything about the labor dispute, but it made for what I think are some awesome shots. If you want to see more of my work you can check it out here.
