[Leica] CRUISE SHIP Photo

[lrzeitlin at gmail.com (Lawrence Zeitlin)]

Ted,

My wife and I have been taking cruises since the 1960s, probably one every
two years. We have seen cruise ships evolve from hastily converted passenger
vessels made redundant after the collapse of the transatlantic trade to
luxury floating hotels. For us, the virtue of a cruise is that you get to go
from place to place without the hassle of packing and unpacking every night.
Cruise lines boast about their gourmet restaurants and entertainments and,
for the most part they are right. You will probably gain five pounds each
trip.


Now for the realities. Despite what you see on the commercials and on the
Love Boat TV shows, cruises are for the geriatric set. With the exception of
the Disney World cruises and a few Carnival Cruise voyages to nowhere, most
passengers are on the far side of 65. Who else has the time to devote one or
two weeks to sybaritic luxury. On the Alaskan Inland Passage cruise the boat
will probably leave from Vancouver and travel along the coast, stopping at
Ketchikan and Juneau. Some may make it as far as Anchorage. Along the way
there will be detours and stops at a variety of towns and scenic places,
depending on the season, to see the salmon runs, to take the Gold Rush
railroad from Seward over the Chilcoot Pass, and to see glaciers calving at
Tracy Arm. Plenty of opportunity for naturalistic and landscape photography.
But there are also good opportunities for street photography as well.
Alaskans are very individualistic.


Your students are not there to learn photography although most will have
cameras, some more expensive than those that you or I own. They attend
classes to make the down time between stops productive. Treat the classes as
if you were teaching a photography course in a junior college. Give a few
tips, a little gentle criticism, and a lot of praise.


Most important, enjoy yourself. Treat it as an adventure not as a job.


Larry Z