Cruising The Seven Seas: Man Down! Man Down!

Man Down! Man Down!

5^th April 2012

It’s the last day of the cruise and things aren’t really starting to look up. Thankfully, it is the last day and maybe things will be different during the next cruise.

Arriving at Castaway Cay, the sky was grey and the clouds threatened to rain. This is always a bad sign for all the photographers, especially the beach shooters, and I was one of them. If the weather is bad at the end of the cruise, the guests tend to be moody. Believe it or not, and they don’t spend as much as they would have if it'd been a sunny day.

When it comes down to the photo department, I can understand that. Getting a photo taken on the beach with blazing sun makes for a nice photo. Same goes with the family standing in front of the ship, surrounded by brilliant blue skies. Dull skies and grey clouds don’t have the same effect.

While walking on the beach, it was deserted compared to normal. My image target was a little lower than usual, too. Instead of 350, I only had to get 300. That target can still be a struggle sometimes, as I don’t like to overshoot, whereas others get three photos of the same person. None of the managers have said anything about over shooting, but a few of the more experienced photographers have.

I won’t lie, I kind of gave up towards the end of my beach session. Usually the beach is split into sections with a photographer in each. They keep going over the area and snapping photos of the new arrivals, etc. By the looks of things, as there the beach was quiet, the other photographers had been wandering into other people’s sections.

Walking up to one lady, I smiled and cheerfully called out “Ma’am, let’s have a smile” and received a sharp reply “No! You’re the fourth photographer to come get my picture. Three is enough.” Of course, if you’re trying to relax on the beach, you don’t want to be constantly bothered by photographers, asking you for photos, so I completely understood why she was annoyed. I would be.

I only had 200 images which was incredibly poor. Speaking to Inna, she had 100 images more than me at the time, but said “I double shoot” before shrugging and walking off. We always look bad when we come back with (like today) 200 images when the newer photographers have 350 and it’s all because they shoot multiples of the same people. It doesn’t sell. Usually the doubles would be removed by the lab manager and only singles counted, but not on beach.

Giving up, I met Ani to go into the shops and get Diva a leaving present. We decided to buy her a Castaway Cay t-shirt and have everyone sign the back of it for her.

Back on board, we walked into the lab to see Cinta with a bandage around her arm. Asking what happened, she told us that she fell off the tram which transports crew and guests around the island.

Later on, we found out the truth. Cintia had got on one of the trams, wanting to go back to the ship to drop off her memory card. Instead, she’d got on the tram to Serenity Bay and crew beach. Realizing she was on the wrong tram, she jumped off, just as the tram started moving. Jumping off the tram, with $2,000 worth of equipment, she went crashing to the ground, slicing her arm open.

Csaba wasn’t in the greatest of moods and making a series on phone calls from the lab. Slamming down the phone on a few occasions, making some of us jump out of our skin, he was trying to find someone to stitch up Cintia’s arm.

The first aid centre on the island just wrapped Cintia’s arm up in a bandage and said she’d need stitches. As she wasn’t an island crew member (or more to the point, a guest) he wouldn’t stitch her up and instead sent her back to the ship.

The medical centre on board Disney Magic was closed for another three hours. The doctor on the island told Cintia that she couldn’t call the emergency number as needing stitches “wasn’t an emergency”. Csaba was furious at this and finally, taking Cintia with him, managed to find someone to open the medical facility to sort her arm out. Fancy having a gash in your arm and the doctor saying “you’ll have to wait until 15.00 to get stitches as it’s not classified as an emergency.” If Cintia was a guest however, you can guarantee things would be the complete opposite.

Bumping into Cintia later on, she’d been signed off from work for at least 48 hours. She wouldn’t be able to lift a camera for a very long time though. In the end, it’d taken ten stitches to close the slice, so it must have been a big/deep cut.

Speaking to the others in Shutters, a few people were saying the girl should be sent home. No doubt she’ll be out of action for a week or more while waiting for the stitches to heal. In ship terms, a week or a cruise is an incredibly long time. Also, we were questioning Cintia’s common sense. Who the hell would jump off a moving tram, especially with so much equipment on her. The equipment wasn’t damaged, which was lucky but, we don’t have spare parts, so if something had happened, we’d be up Shit Creek without a paddle!

Now it’s just a case of waiting to see what will happen to Cintia. Will she be sent home? Or as Image like to put it: Chicken or Beef?

Photographs from previous sessions shooting beach.