Meet the Disney Princesses

Meet the Disney Princesses

As I haven't been able to type a lot recently, due to my wrist, I thought I'd upload some photos of the Disney characters and Disney Magic team members.

To start with, let's meet the Disney Princesses...

The Princesses

Princess Belle from Beauty and the Beast

My First Princess - Aurora


Princess Tiana


Cinderella

Princess Aurora - Sleeping Beauty

Snow White - Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Princess Tiana - Princess and the Frog, and Snow White

Snow White and Belle - Beauty and the Beast

Cinderella and Snow White

Snow White and Sleeping Beauty


Cinderella Going to the Ball




Princess Minnie Mouse

Belle - Beauty and the Beast

The Princesses - Belle, Tiana, Cinderella, Tiana, Aurora and Snow White

Posing with the Princesses

Posing with the Princesses

21^st February 2012

We’re in Grand Cayman today and unfortunately for us photographers, our schedule doesn’t allow us to get off the ship. Surprise! Most of the team haven’t visited the island – it’s a bit of a bum note!

Waking up at 09.30, I didn’t have work until lab set up at 10.30. Taking my time, I got ready and went to the Mess for breakfast.

Half way through eating, Maryna came in to get me. Everyone excluding myself and Carolee had training at 10.00. Wrong. Maryna informed me that Dave had made a mistake on the schedule. Carolee and I were needed in the training session. I wasn’t too impressed to say the least. Straight away my working day just went from 10.5 hours to 11. No doubt my working hours will extend somewhere else, too.

After the meeting, we set up the lab before having two hours off. As soon as I could, I was in the gym for about 45 minutes before it came surprisingly busy. Coming back to the cabin, I got ready for studio set up and sat around chilling for 30 minutes.

Again I was shooting Princess Gathering. To be fair, I thoroughly enjoy shooting Princess Gathering. It’s a lot of fun. Sometimes I think I enjoy Princess Gathering more than the kids do! Worrying!

Rather than setting up LSP after Princess Gathering, we did it at the same time. After the gathering, all we had to do was break down one light and attach it to the LSP autopole. It’d take five minutes. Bonus as by the looks of things, I’d get an extra hour break.

We soon ran into a few problems with Clarita. Kate tried helping her out by setting up her studio sign (sample shots, studio times and a no entry sign for when closed) so that Clarita didn’t have to do it later. Little did Kate know, she’d set up the sign for the wrong studio. Clarita was shooting LSP and not Black so the sign had to be redone. It’s a simple mistake. Clarita had a go at Kate and even went as far as to accuse for her “stealing” her “Studio Closed: Do Not Enter” sign. 

Next I asked Clarita to chuck me the expo case as I had to run up to Deck 4 to help Aniko out in her studio. She didn’t hear me… or so I thought. I called again “I heard you. You’ll have to wait. I’m in the middle of something”. Closing a pentab case takes two seconds! I walked down the stairs to Deck 3 and just as I was nearly there, Clarita threw the cover and informed me “You have legs!”

I was furious at her snapping at everyone. I was even more annoyed by the fact that I’d just spent five minutes helping her sort out a problem with her radio slave, only to find out she wasn’t attaching it to the camera properly. She’s a Photog 2 for crying out loud!

After helping out, I walked over to where Cinderella would be posing to test the lights and gave the expo to Carolee. She mentioned Clarita snapping at people so I told her what’d happened. Her reply was “she’s acting pissy at everyone because she’s leaving. Good riddance.”

Soon enough the princesses arrived. I was first in line and shooting Sleeping Beauty, Princess Aurora. Working with the princesses is so easy going as they know what they have to do and how to get the best results. All I have to do is make a noise to get the kids looking at the camera and press the shutter release button.

Princess Gathering which is usually pure madness was incredibly quiet. I was shocked, we all were, even the princesses. When things went quite I told Aurora’s greeter Jennifer to move in for a photo with the Princess. Aurora called me over, “I want a photo with my Princess Gathering photographer”. I bounded over to Sleeping Beauty like a child!

Soon Clarita came over wanting me to take a photo with her and Aurora. For someone who was talking to people like crap, she certainly knew how to change her tune when it suited her. Next I went on to get one with Princess Tiana. Later on I had all three princesses and greeters standing in a line, posing for a photo together. I’ll have to get it printed and get a copy to them. The only princesses I hadn’t had my photo with are Snow White and Cinderella. That time will come.

The princesses finished up early, allowing us to get LSP done and dusted. As we finished up early we’d got ourselves an hour break. This was added onto my hour dinner break.

Meeting Kate in the Mess, we quickly had lunch before she ran to shoot more characters. I came back to the cabin to type up my blog entries and here I am.

It’s 18.26 now, so I have to change into my evening uniform soon and get off to Shutters before coming back to change into my black shirt and heading into the lab for printing. I’m going to take a spare memory card with me and get some photos off the server to upload to Facebook and send to the Mama.

So far the day’s going well. Fingers crossed it continues.

**UPDATE**

It’s nearly 1am here and we are on our way to Cozumel, Mexico. The great news is that the clocks go back tonight - for 24 hours.

In the gallery I managed to sell a couple of packages and five folios which pleased me no end. So far, I’ve made a whopping $5 in commission – big round of applause for me! Of course there is a slight hint of sarcasm in that comment.

Later on, at the end of the night I was working in the lab printing the character shots from Kate and Mark. Mark’s cropping is terrible. He’s not zooming in and out so it’s making his cropping too tight and in many cases cutting peoples toes/feet/hands/fingers off. Oh, and the bobble on Goofy’s hat. I had leave printing to observe him shooting for a while, to make sure he was/wasn’t zooming in and out. He wasn’t.

When I asked about zooming in and out, Mark told me “what’s the point?” before pointing to his pentab screen, “look, it’s a perfect crop for this group shot”. When I nicely told him it wasn’t, the cropping was too tight, he replied, telling me I was wrong! I was shocked. It was better me telling him about his cropping than management. Mark wouldn’t have any of it. I was wrong, he was right. Now, unfortunately Diva is going to have to have a word with him if his cropping doesn’t improve.

Kate’s cropping on the other hand, was spot on 95% of the time. The other 5% were just minor adjustments. Like I said before, when you have someone who knows what they are doing, it makes life in the lab so much easier.

After work I sat around in the lab chatting to Diva and Carolee while getting photos off the server to add to Facebook and send home for the parents.

 Rama bought his friend’s guitar down and started having a sing-song with Carolee. Rama is actually a very good singer, but the faces he pulls when singing, had Carolee on the floor, crying with laughter. That only got Diva and myself laughing. Rama carried on as if nothing was happening which made everyone crack up more. They were singing everything from Whitney Houston’s I Will Always Love You, Adele’s Someone Like You and Amy Winehouse’s version of Valerie. It was such a great laugh, a brilliant way to end the night.

Posing with Princess Aurora

My Princess

Princess Gathering

Princess Gathering

7^th February 2012

It was another early rising for us Disney new hires – more training. Yesterday, we had an hour on the subject of paedophilia, as you can imagine, a Disney cruise ship can be the perfect hunting ground for a dirty pervert!! Dare I say it, but as you can imagine, there have been cases in the past, but that I cannot go into. Sorry!

Today we had to endure an hour long, American-cheese video about health and safety in the work place. To be more specific: slips, trips and falls. To avoid such happenings in the work place you must follow the Three A’s: Awareness, Attitude and Action.

The only part I willingly paid attention to was the American trying to mimic the English accent (overly posh and badly) while carrying a large, over filled box. “I’m the butler and taking this box downstairs to the pantry”, as Russell Peter’s once said, you can’t mock the English accent without pulling the most ridiculous facial expressions. Needless to say, the Butler got his comeuppance for his poor English accent by taking a rather nasty fall down a steep staircase.

The two hour break was glorious! After being cooped up in a dark room or floating tin with no windows, it was great to get out to the crew swimming pool area and see the light of day. Grand Cayman looks stunning from the ship. I’m jealous I didn’t have time to get off. It’s a tendering port so by the time I set foot on island, I would have to turn back. Maybe next time.

Looking around there were about six ships alongside us. Two in particular stood out, Celebrity Solstice, where Gudrun (a friend from Miami training) is currently working and Voyager of the Seas where my previous BM Jomar was transferred to. Hopefully next week I’ll be able to meet up with Gudrun, it’s been a long time since Miami training. Seeing another Voyager class ship (same class as Mariner of the Seas) made me miss my previous photo team even more. The idea of jumping off Disney Magic, swimming through shark infested water to get to Voyager of the Seas to announce my arrive as a new photographer coming to work on the ship, popped into my head. If it wasn’t so idiotic, it’d be romantic fairy tale scene from a Disney film! That, or Disney’s magic and pixie dust is turning my brain cells to mush.

Afterwards we had a two hour break before meeting in Top Siders;  the guest’s buffet area, what Mariner of the Seas called Wind Jammer. Our little training team had a team lunch date. A chance for us to stuff our faces with good food one last time before returning to the pulpy mess served in the Mess.

Running down from the training team lunch we had an hour of life raft training. How to launch a life raft, what can be used to attract attention, what we should do once we are away from the sinking/sunken ship, etc.

Next Clarita and I were running from training to set up. The AMP wasn’t happy with me for going straight to set up. Apparently, I was supposed to get my camera and pentab first which is the opposite to how everyone I know usually does it.

Today would be my first chance to shooting a character so I was pretty excited yet nervous in case I cocked up. Princess Gathering happens once a cruise. All the Disney princesses grace the hoard of guests with their presence and there just so happen to be a handful of professional photographers standing by, armed with studio lights and cameras. The princesses featuring in this week’s Princess Gathering were Aurora (Sleeping Beauty), Snow White, Cinderella, Belle (Beauty and the Beast), Tiana (Disney’s first black princess). I was shooting Arura and second in line. Once the guests started coming, we snapped away endless amounts of time, quickly racking up the image counts.

Strangely enough the princesses all decided to leave 30 minutes earlier than scheduled. Bjanca and I got on with setting up LSP (Lifestyle Portraits) where I’d be shooting this evening. Set up for me, on Disney Magic is particularly hard, the ceilings are so much higher and attaching the lights to the autopoles without a ladder is proving to be difficult. I had to ask another photog, Carolee (Jamaica) for help. According to her “short while girls can’t reach anything, but Filipinos are smaller than you white girls and they can reach the tall heights”. I was starting to feel inadequate and for a few minutes cursing my height, something that has never, ever bothered me.

The AMP came up later to check everything was okay. When I told her I was leaving for an hour break she got on the phone, changed the schedule around and told me I’d be shooting a session of LSP instead. Now. My break was then scheduled for two hours later. Somehow there was a misunderstanding. My schedule says “Setup LSP”. Somewhere in the two words I misunderstood, set up LSP… and shoot for 1.5 hours.  I did as I was told, took my break 2 hours later and in total shot three sessions of LSP.

Popping into the lab, Clarita asked how comes I was allowed to wear the daytime uniform. The reason being was that on Disney, if you are shooting casual LSP, you wear your grey trousers and black “day” shirt. As soon as she said it, the AMP began questioning whether or not I could wear my “day” jacket. The BM asked me why I was wearing it, “because I have a cold from the air conditioning. One minute I’m hot, next I’m freezing so I’ve been slipping the jacket on and off all day”. A very unimpressed looking manager then instructed me that it was an Image policy that no one could wear their day jacket on the ship, even during the day. The jacket was only to be worn while working on the gangway. Without wanting to sound overly moody or sensitive, since yesterday (formal night) I’ve been under the impression that the BM has taken a thorough dislike to me. After what happened to Becks, I’d better keep my mouth shut, head down and cover my arse!

During a 45 minute break I went and sat up on the forward part of the ship, by the crew swimming pool. To be fair, I was feeling incredibly down and completely on my own. I missed my Mariner of the Seas photo team.

Once the night was finally over, the photographers had a meeting with the characters (entertainment) department. We were introduced to the crew who are “friends” with certain characters. I could tell who Cinderella was straight away. The person who threw me the most was Aurora, she looked completely different!

By the end of the night I was completely drained and slumped into bed. Tomorrow is another day and to top it off, I’m not working until 15.00!

Princess Gathering from Above

The Princesses - Belle, Tiana, Cinderella, Aurora and Snow White