The Voice Of A Traveler

Customer: So what’s the deal with these photos?
Me: These are buy 3 and then you get the 4th one free.
Customer: So if I buy 2, I get a free one?
Me: When you buy 3, you get the next one free.
Customer: Oh! Ok!

Yeah….it’s amazing how some of the people here just simply don’t listen to what I say, and then how many times I have to explain myself in different ways just to convey one simple thing. Another amazing thing is how some people will complain and make an awful face when I say the photos are $19.95 each, but then other people will throw down $400 or $500 without blinking and buy tons of photos.

Apparently one of the other cruise ships that makes port here in Juneau was 3 hours late getting in to port today…..because there was a dead whale stuck to the bow of the ship. I saw a photo of it in the newspaper. So weird. I’m not really sure why it slowed the ship down, or how it got stuck or anything. All I know is some whale decided to die right under the Sapphire Princess.

All the standing that my job has required me to do, has left my knee in a bit of pain. I tore my PCL back in high school and so whenever I strain it by doing something stressful, such as extending running, standing or something, it acts up. Well I do a lot of standing now. There just so happens to be an acupuncturist on board the Ryndam, so I got him to give me some pokes. Honestly I don’t feel like it made much of a difference. I haven’t really had any strong pains since then, but maybe I haven’t been doing as much walking, or I’m used to it now, or whatever. Or maybe it has helped. I just thought it would be a fun thing to try out acupuncture for once.

The result of our regional manager being on the ship for the last week has been that she wants me to become a Black Label artist at some point. She said that she might even send me on the next training session in Missouri, which would be some time in the fall. In the beginning it sounded like a great thing to do, but after speaking with my boss a little about it, it seems like I will need to think about it a bit more before I make up my mind on whether or not to do it. Apparently since Ocean Images needs Black Label artists so bad, if I started to do that, it would be really hard for me to get out of it and do something else if I wanted. Another option is to get on a Ferry in Europe and work 2-3 day cruises, shooting on Embarkation photos. It would be a lot of work, really good money, and only a 4 month contract. I’ll need to think about it all.

I’m going to be starting to do some photojournalism type photography on the ship itself. I’m not really gonna say much about what I’m going to do or when it will be done, but I just wanted to mention that I’ll be starting that soon. Whenever it’s a finished work I’ll make it available. Don’t expect anything anytime soon. On that note though, there are a few more photos in the photo gallery from the last week. One is an 80 second exposure off the aft of the ship. It was a cloudy night, and made a really nice photo. I plan to do it again when it’s a clear night and maybe I can catch some star trails.

Everyone around here has a boss, and even people who aren’t your boss, are your boss. One of the ways of greeting each other is to say “Hi boss!”. This is especially popular among the Indonesian and Philippinos. Speaking of bosses, our region manager is on the ship this week. One of the products we sell is Black Label photography, and sales have not been good for our Black Label artist. We are supposed to be making 20-25 bookings each week, and we have been averaging 2-3 a week. That is absolutely dismal. It doesn’t even cost the passengers a penny to sign up for a booking, so it should be really easy to get them into the studio to get their photos taken. So anyways, our boss is here to make sure we’re doing our job, as well as to give us pointers on how to do better. So I’ve made a concentrated effort to tell people about the Black Label and I’ve already made 9 bookings in 2 days. So hopefully it will start to pay off.

We are also going to be getting a new videographer today who will be on our ship for about a week. We are just training him here and then he’ll go to some other ship. We are getting a replacement photographer to replace my roommate who left two weeks ago. The replacement will stick around, and he’ll be new to the company so it will mainly be my job to train him. Well I say “him”, but we don’t know who it will be yet, maybe he will be a she.

I went on a whale watching excursion last week and got some great photos of a whale breaching. That basically just means jumping out of the water. Those photos are in the photo gallery. I also went on a rainforest tour yesterday in the hopes of seeing bald eagles. Well I did get to see a few and got some ok shots, but not nearly as close as I had hoped. Apparently I went on the wrong excursion and there is one that is much better which I will go on next week. Next week I also get to go snorkeling in Ketchikan. The water is about 56 degrees but I just think it will be so cool to go snorkeling in Alaska. They do have wet suites for us.

One of the best things about working on a cruise ship are all the excursions that you can go on for practically free. As I already mentioned I went on an excursion kayaking that would have normally cost $109 for passengers, and I did it for free. Then the next day I took a train ride that would normally be $180 for passengers, and it cost me $5. It was a train ride through the mountains in Scagway and I got some beautiful photographs that are now posted in my photo gallery. Today I will be going on the Glacier Point Wilderness Safari in Haines, which would be $199 for passengers, and I get it for free. I’ll be going on many excursions while I can.

Well the crew officers decided that I wasn’t going to be able to keep that room to myself so I have now moved in with one of the other photographers. It worked out pretty well because his fiancé just left as her contract is over, which means she won’t always be in the room. The room is much smaller than the one I just left, but it is in a much better location of the ship. I am very near the elevators and the OB (Officers Bar, it’s the place everyone hangs out after work) and I also don’t have to walk down this long corridor that stinks really bad. Ah yes…and since George’s fiancé has left, he is very sad and now instead of her in the room all the time, it will be me.

Life on the ship is getting much easier and I’m getting more used to the daily schedule and everything that needs to be done. I’m also learning a lot more about the job and I’m getting a pretty good hang of it I think. Last week I was able to sell more than 30 DVDs throughout the cruise – let’s see if I can beat that this week.

One major change is that my roommate has been transferred to a different ship. Only Americans are able to work on the dock to take photos of people getting off the ships, so he was probably transferred so that he could do that on another ship that didn’t have enough Americans. Because of him leaving we have one less person obviously, and they aren’t planning to send us a replacement photographer any time soon. It will mean a little more work for us. I have the room to myself for the rest of the week but I’m sure they are going to make me move at the end of this cruise because the two of the other photographers on the ship also have their own rooms. At least I get to enjoy my own room for a short amount of time.

Today I went on a short land excursion. I went kayaking to Douglas Island. We didn’t actually get out of the kayaks on an island, but we got to kayak around a bay and had a really nice time enjoying the sun and scenery. We saw a whole bunch of bald eagles, and we got really close to them. There was a tower thing in the middle of the bay which was about 20 feet high, and there were two eagles sitting on it. We got right up to the tower and so we were maybe about 30 or 40 feet away from the eagles. They are huge and majestic birds. We also saw a bunch of ducks, a few seals and a lot of other types of birds. I took my camera with me but the kayaks were the kind that sealed and so I couldn’t reach into my pocket to get the camera out and I didn’t want to have it sitting on my lap while we were kayaking. So I didn’t get any photos of the eagles or anything, but I did get some photos from the beach area. There was a glacier in the background and a lot of snow capped mountains, so it was extremely beautiful.

I’ve updated my photo gallery with a few photos of Alaska. This is a small sampling of what my cabin looks like as well as a few shots of the ship and the surrounding areas. There will be plenty more to come in the future.