Cruising The Seven Seas: Flying Photographers

Flying Photographers

20^th October 2011

It’s one of the many sea days and another formal night. This is my penultimate formal night and once again the prospect of going home is making me feel like a kid at Christmas! It won’t be long until I can see the parents, relax, sleep in a proper bed, in a room with a window allowing natural light to stream through in the morning and best of all, not having to wake up in the morning to a screaming alarm clock! At the same time, in the pit on my stomach, I’m feeling nervous and dreading leaving the ship because of my team who have become great friends, almost family, especially Sandra. Out of all the team I’d say I’m closest to Sandra and Zoran. We do a lot together and naturally gel well.

I was scheduled for what I thought would be a usual stint on table sale at WindJammer. Looking at the schedule again, I was due to be there for a whopping 3.5 hours!! Not even the clocks going forward would save me from having to stand on my feet for three and a half hours. Let’s hope one of the Spa girls were oustide Windjammer doing their table sale to keep me company!

In the end, after all that time I only sold an Olympus camera plus memory card, two tripods, four sets of AA batteries and a camera case. People didn’t feel the urgency to buy. How can I give someone to urgency to buy a camera apart from “we only have these left in stock”? Not only did it seem so cliché, but I think people have heard it so many times before, even if it was true, they wouldn’t believe it. I was racking my brains for something else to say to make the interested guests buy. I failed, obviously.

The good thing about being on table sale in the morning was that I get to miss set up. I did feel sorry for the other guys on set up as Zoran is off for medical reasons. Zoran is in serious pain with his hip and he’s not one to complain. Seeing him hobbling along in the Staff Mess made me realize how bad things actually were. It still didn’t stop me or anyone else from poking fun at him, mimicking him. He took it on the chin with the usual “fuck you. Go get a tan” and so on. The team’s banter is sometimes what makes the day go quicker and makes the whole experience a lot more enjoyable. If I didn’t have such a laugh with my team, I don’t know how I would have survived six months on board!!

Tonight I was situated on Deck 5 with Leandro and David. Again, I was shooting my beloved Ship which I now classified as “my studio”. Leandro (Kenji/Sato) and David were shooting the Centrums. As always all three of us missed our targets by long shots.

By the end of the night, with about 45 minutes to go before we closed, Leandro came into my studio, jumping in front of the ship and generally mucking around. It became a bit of a game with us both taking it in turns and jumping about taking photos. We even tried to use it as a way of getting the odd person walking past, to come in and have their photo taken. It didn’t work though. They just laughed and carried on.

The Mexican singers from Boleros came over to talk to me and get their photo taken. They are such a lovely bunch and gave me a good laugh in the studio. One is quite a lot shorter than the rest, so for a joke, I gave him a small posing box to stand on to bring him up to the other’s height. Just for evidence, I had to take a full length shot to show he was standing on a posing box which had everyone laughing and poking fun at him.

Once the night was over, we took some pizza down to Zoran who was still lying in bed with a bad hip and bored senseless. On the way back from the lab, walking down the I-95 (main strip running from one end of the ship to another) it felt strange that I soon wouldn’t be here. People were walking past me, smiling, nodding their hellos, with the odd “are you photographers finally finished for the night?” and everyone asking everyone how their night had been. It’s a bit like walking around a little village! The Mariner has become my second home.