The Voice Of A Traveler

Well we have achieved the unthinkable. We are first in the fleet overall. There are 15 Holland America ships all with Ocean Images in the photo department, and the Ryndam is first this week – even ahead of the Oosterdam. That’s not supposed to happen. We sold over $5,000 worth of DVDs last week and made over $30,000 total. The Oosterdam sold more than us I’m sure, but they also have like 60% more passengers, so overall we were the better ship last week. This week is shaping up to be a great week too, so hopefully we can keep that going. We have a lot of changes happening soon though. Today was the last day for our newest photographer who just joined the ship a month ago. He’s getting transferred to the Oosterdam. In San Diego we’re losing two other photographers. Only two people are going to replace the three that are leaving. We’ll be down to five people on the team, but that’s normal for the Caribbean season.

I went sled dogging in Ketchikan last Friday. It wasn’t on a glacier, but at least it was a lot of fun to get to see the dogs and puppies. Clare went with me, and we got to have a ride on a sled that the dogs pulled. It was more like a golf cart actually. The dogs are quite small, but they can go fast and can pull a ton of weight for a long time. Photos are uploaded, and also a few photos from my paintballing experience a couple weeks ago.

The adventure for next week is adventure carting. I don’t really know what that is, but it sounds like a mix between go carts and ATVs. I’m gonna go with one of the other photographers who is leaving in San Diego. I’ll definitely post some photos from that too later. Oh, and we plan to go bungie jumping in Mexico in a few weeks!

It was around 9 o’clock at night and I was working in the photo gallery when all of a sudden the boat listed really hard to one side. A few minutes later it listed hard back to the other side. Later that night when I was down in the bar, some of the cadets said that we nearly ran over a small fishing boat. I guess out here in the ocean the rule of thumb is: be large.

A couple days later I saw a few houses floating by us as we went down the narrows. These were full sized houses too, not just bits and pieces of them. I think they were all tied together and were being pulled by some sort of tugboat. It was formal night and so I was in the middle of shooting photos so I couldn’t get a good look on what exactly was happening, but it sure looked interesting.

I had planned on going dog sledding on the top of a glacier today, but things didn’t work out for that. Instead, I’m gonna go play paintball with a bunch of my crew friends. Should be fun to shoot up my friends.

I’ve also uploaded a few new photos to the gallery. Most of them are from earlier in the season. I went through my photo library and selected a few photos that I found interesting and did the edits. The Indonesians often have their little laptops out and they know where all the wifi hot spots are. In this photo they are all tucked in between two mailboxes. I also find the photo of the old van interesting. This was parked right outside a bar and the band members were either loading or unloading their musical equipment. What I find exceptional is that the license plate is from Washington State. Who knows, maybe they drove all the way up from Washington to Juneau just to play at this bar. From the looks of the van they might have done just that.

Also, please don’t send any more mail to my Ketchikan address. I only have about 2 more weeks in Alaska and I don’t want to lose anything that you want to send to me. I will update my address once I get to the Caribbean. It will be an address in Tampa Bay.

Killer whale for lunch, tide-water glacier for afternoon snack, and black bears for dinner. All I have to do is look out of the window from deck 11 as I eat my meals and I get to see all kinds of wildlife. It’s a good life. I’ve seen moose, black bear, brown bear, humpback whale, killer whale, seal, sea lion, bald eagle, mountain goat, 5 different species of salmon, otter, and dozens of glaciers of all sorts. I have had to go on a few excursions to see some of these, but most of them I saw from the ship. The moose was probably the coolest. Once when we were in Glacier Bay National Park and there happened to be a female moose swimming across the channel. That is very rare so it was sure cool to see.

Besides all the obvious wildlife and scenery benefits from the trip I’ve been making friends and connections like there’s no tomorrow. I have probably mentioned before how great it is to make friends from all over the world, but I just want to mention it again.

In other news, I have recently purchased a Leica M8 along with a Carl Zeiss 35mm lens. I’ve never used a rangefinder but I am about to start. The M8 is coming from California and the lens from Australia. I’m going to have to wait a couple weeks before getting them because they are being shipped to Ketchikan and I’m going to just miss them this coming week. I’m excited to start my journey in exploring this new kind of photography. In the future I will probably move more and more into rangefinder photography and away from SLRs simply because rangefinders are made more for street photography. Once I’m done with ship life I’ll be doing a lot of traveling around the world on my own for street photography and documentation. An unobtrusive camera that is quick, nearly silent and reliable is what I will want for that.

And that is my sentiments for this fine day in Juneau, Alaska. For the last three weeks I have enjoyed bright sunny days with blue skies, which has made me wonder what happened to the typical Alaska that rains more than 300 days of the year. Well, today has returned to normal and it is a miserable rainy day. I’m just happy for all the good weather that we’ve had until now and in about five weeks I will be in the Caribbean, where the weather should be fabulous all the time. I was looking at our itinerary and it looks like we’ll be in Tampa and Key West every week, and then the other five days of the week we’ll be in different ports all the time. The Cayman Islands will be on the agenda once every two weeks, and I know we’ll be in Mexico often. It sounds like it’s gonna be a blast. I hear the money isn’t as good as in Alaska, but we’ll also have more free time to compensate for that…not to mention all the awesome ports that we’ll be in.

I would rate this job as the second hardest job that I have ever done in my life. Second only to selling books door to door. When I sold books, I worked 83 hours a week, here I work a measly 63. Selling books was more draining than this job, but that job only spanned 10 weeks and I knew that when I was done with those 10 weeks, I would be done with the job. This job is 8 months and I don’t get any days off. I work an average of 9 hours a day 7 days a week. I will probably get a day off when we go through the panama canal just because that will be a 21 day cruise with the same passengers and we just won’t be as busy. Because of all this work, there is one dramatic similarity between these two jobs that I would like to underline. Dreams.

When I worked as a book salesman, I would have my book bag right next to the bed where I slept, and on several occasions I would grab the bag in my sleep, pull it into bed with me, and start giving my sales pitch. With this job, I constantly find myself waking up in the middle of the night trying to explain to customers that the photos are $19.95 and it’s buy 3 get one free. Half the time the customers just look back at me with no comprehension, and so I lay back in bed. I feel so guilty for not giving it my all to explain to them the price. I feel bad like I’m being a bad person when I close my eyes when the customer is still looking at me not understanding what the price is. It seems so real, and it’s literally almost impossible for me to realize that it’s a dream. Once, I realized it was a dream so in the middle of me mumbling the price, I just laid back down and didn’t even try anymore. The best time though, was when my roommate came into the room late one night after I had gone to bed, and apparently I sat up, pulled the curtain back from my bed, and declared to him “Somebody might want to order something!” I vaguely remember doing this, but I was in such a stupor that it seemed like a completely natural thing to say at the time.

I think all this dreaming and sleep working is very interesting, especially considering that they have only happened to me with the two busiest jobs that I’ve ever had.

If a man speaks at sea where no woman can hear him, is he still wrong? That, my friend, is the question.

I had one of the best birthdays of my life. Not a lot of people knew that it was my birthday, but it was really great. First off, I hung out a bit with my friend Chris, who is the black label artist on the Ryndam. We went and found a wifi spot to get internet, and I got a lesson on color theory from him which is a little ironic considering he is the resident black and white photographer. I was then able to talk on the phone with all three of my lovely family members. Later I hung out in the OB with a bunch of friends. The next night I was able to hang out with more people who didn’t realize that my birthday was the 3^rd, so I kinda had two birthday parties. Between the two nights I got more than enough free drinks. Also, my boss Tino bought a huge bottle of Grey Goose Vodka for me, and his wife gave me Burberry London cologne. So now I get to smell good when I drink vodka!

Life on a ship is constantly changing and evolving. Passengers are new and different every week. Crew members come and go as their contracts end. Contract length varies from job to job. My contract of 8 months is definitely one of the longer ones. I have friends who have 9 or 10 month contracts, but most are in the 4 to 6 month range. Then there are people who are only here for 1 to 3 months, and a few are only here for a couple of weeks. Of course not everyone got on the ship at the same time, so people are always leaving and then being replaced by new people.

We have a new photographer on the team. He is from Seattle and so as he’s an American citizen, he can help me shoot the gangways. This makes it a lot easier for us to get more photos and then once every two weeks I’ll get the day off from shooting as he’ll do it by himself. Earlier in the week Chris, Justin and I were on the aft of the ship taking long exposure photos, and we got some great results, particularily one photo. We used Justin’s fish-eye lens coupled with Chris’s full frame sensor. The result is stunning. I have it uploaded in the photo gallery. The city lights that you see are Juneau and the moon is also shining through the clouds. The fish-eye effect is really amazing, especially on a full frame camera.

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.