Digital Photography Workshop at Sea
Was A Great Experience For All

We kicked off with a 2:30 p.m. cocktail party at Satchmo’s Club, one of the ship’s many beautiful lounges, and did a head count to make sure everyone was there. Right from the beginning we knew this was going to be a great bunch. We had a mix of ages from 21 to 81, a couple of doctors, a dentist, a manicurist, three information specialists from large corporations, a psychologist, some retired execs, a few teachers, a citrus farmer, two secretaries, a pharmacist, an appliance repair specialist, a waitress, a husband-wife business team from the Midwest, a photographer who’d shot film for years, and even dpcorner’s webmaster who made a two-day long trek to get to the ship from way up North in Canada. The common bond, of course, was that everyone was interested in the esthetics and technique of digital photography, Photoshop, and printing.

I handled the digital photography part, Dan Loffler, a Miami ad agency art director did the Photoshop sessions, and Timothy Larson, geek extraordinaire, ably took care of the printing sessions and slayed the inevitable computer gremlins that had stowed away on some of the laptops that about half the class brought along. If you didn’t have a laptop, it was no big deal because Epson supplied six standalone 785 EPX printers, paper, and enough ink to drown in. Nobody went without.

The Legend was commodious and fast and its staff attended to your every need. The food was to die for (and you had to watch your intake or you literally might), and in the off-hours of class there was plenty to do– first rate shows, swimming, using the internet, or just getting away from it all in a deck chair with a good book (that invariably never got read because the sea air and whoosh of the ship’s wake usually sent you right into a relaxing nap).

Our group had the exclusive use of the hi-tech conference room which was packed with brand-new AV goodies. Video projectors, sound systems, split lighting– and it all worked perfectly. However, at first we couldn’t figure out how to adjust the room temperature (it’s the low-tech stuff that’ll get you every time). Not to worry, the ship had assigned a special cruise coordinator to our group and he had an AV guy, sound & light guy, and a ship’s engineer on call. Turns out, there was a thermostat (two of them) in the room that everyone had overlooked. A turn of the wheels and the temperature was under control.

Although there was a lot of formal instruction, the best part of the cruise was the critiquing sessions where we projected student pictures on the large screen and commented on them. I used a Mac iBook with a VGA cable that plugged into one of the projector outlets. Sometimes those sessions would run (at student demand) till 2 a.m. in the morning, so high was the enthusiasm. During each day at sea, a table loaded with goodies was delivered to the conference room for our breaks– dozens of pastries, juice, two kinds of coffee, water and so on. There was still plenty left during our night sessions to munch on, though you could just take the elevator up a few decks and bring back pizza, a corned beef sandwich, the greatest soft ice-cream in the world or anything else– all free of course.

Regular mealtimes in the dining room were full of story-telling and students at the various tables became instant buddies– some going on photo shoots as a group around the ship, others doing their own thing. Shore excursions at various ports were exciting– white water rafting, flying high above the rainforest in an aerial tram, reef diving, visiting Mayan ruins, railroading through the jungle, taking a ferry through the Panama Canal, or just wandering around and shooting pictures as you found them. Which, incidentally, was one of the subjects of my opening lecture– in which I showed examples of seemingly mundane things you see every day and then, looking closer, turn into exciting images.

The Photoshop sessions were an added plus on this year’s cruise and when one of the students brought in some pictures of a particularly attractive cocktail waitress she had induced to pose for her, the fun really began. Dan used one eye from one shot and one from another to get two good open eyes. Then he went to work to straighten her bow tie, which was askew– and more. When we finally presented her with the pictures at dinner and showed her the various elements we had used to make her more perfect, she was –as the saying goes– simply blown away. For some reason, the next round of drinks she brought seemed to be more robust.

All in all, the attendees had a wonderful time, took some great pictures, and developed a thirst for more future adventures on the high seas. They even induced me to look into another cruise in June, possibly to Alaska, where we would concentrate on travel, wildlife, and scenic digital photography. This would not be for beginners but for those who had some previous knowledge of photography. However, we’re already planning another beginner-intermediate cruise again for next year.

We’ll be posting some student pictures in a simple gallery so look for them after the first of the year. If there’s a link here, it means they're already up. For further information about future Digital Photography Workshop Cruises, email me and I’ll keep you informed.

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