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.