How I create my photos

by | Jul 3, 2024 | Photography

I have had a number of people both here on my blog and on Cruise Critic comment…

  • Many of you have been curious about my photography process. You’ve asked, ‘How do I take my photos? What kind of camera do I use? What type of lens?’ Some of you even wondered if I’m using a camera at all or just my phone.
  • One of the most common questions I get is about how I manage to process and share my photos while on a cruise. It’s definitely a unique challenge, but I’ve developed a system that works for me.
  • Others also want to know any travel photo tips I might have.

My buddy Mike Preisman always has his equipment at the bottom of every page of his website. I don’t, so here are the answers, along with commentary (did you expect any less) about my photo process. This will get a little geeky for some of you, so please feel free to ignore this post.

My Gear

I have been a Nikon guy since I went digital. I chose Nikon because of one thing. My son-in-law had a Nikon, and I figured we could borrow each other’s lenses. This was back in 1999, and we have only done that once. Get the camera you like. Get a lens that works for you. I am part of a group on Reddit who are Nikon users. One of my biggest criticisms of those who are in the group is that they are too concerned with what gear to buy. More than half the posts are about what lens or camera body to buy.

I shoot a mirrorless Nikon Z7II. I have been using it since fall 2022. It’s the best camera I have ever owned (Don’t sweat if you don’t know what a mirrorless camera is.)

One of the things I get a lot of flack about from the Nikon groups is that I only carry one lens. I have seen people walking around ships or on the streets with a camera bag with 2, 3, 4 or more lenses. I just won’t do it. That’s too much to carry everywhere I go. I carry a zoom lens so that I can take large landscapes as well as close-ups and distant subjects. Up until just before this trip, I was using a 28-300mm zoom lens from Nikon. It was a great lens, but I needed a new one because it was from my old digital lens reflex camera, and I had to use an adapter to use it. That not only added weight to what I was carrying around but it was one more thing my images could be affected by when shooting. But Nikon did me one better and brought out a 28-400mm lens, and I love it! What an awesome camera and lens combo for a travel photographer. What am I getting with this lens? The ability to carry one lens.

The only other thing I feel important if you are a travel photographer is the right strap. I see people carrying these huge cameras either in their hands or around their necks. The only strap you get from a camera manufacturer is a neck strap. The only thing a neck strap does is give you a sore neck. When your camera and lens combo weigh almost five pounds, any chiropractor will tell you are nuts to hang that around your neck. So, I found a great strap years ago. It’s called a Blackrapid strap. It attaches to your camera on the bottom, where you screw the connector into the tripod mount. Then, it hangs off a cross-body strap (see the illustration.) and rides on your hip. The only problem I have with it is that mine is getting old, and they don’t have the exact same one I do because mine has a small pocket on the front that was built to put a flip phone in (that’s how old it is ?) and I keep my extra battery in there. I hate having it in my pocket, so I will probably have this one forever.

One last thing about camera gear: Don’t ever say this to a photographer: “WOW! I love your pictures. What kind of camera do you use?” Before you say that, consider this: Would you ask a chef of a great meal what kind of pan he cooks with? It’s the same thing as far as I am concerned. I believe I take great travel photos because I practice a lot, take classes and shoot great stuff. One of my favorite photographic gurus is Scott Kelby. When Scott was asked what gear someone should buy to be a better photographer, Scott told them not to buy anything but to spend the same amount of money to go someplace awesome. His mantra is, “If you want to take amazing photos, stand in front of amazing places.” I agree.

My Process

I have developed a pretty specific process for taking, rating, processing and improving my photos. First, I always shoot photos in RAW format. Ninety percent of photographers shoot in JPEG format. When I shoot in RAW, I get a digital negative. But that means that I can’t show you any photo I have taken until I process it. That takes time. I process all my photos through a process.

Second, when shooting, I go back and forth on my camera between my Program mode and Manual mode. When I am in full sunlight and have lots of light, I shoot in Program mode, on my camera that’s pretty much as close to automatic as you get. When I shoot early in the morning or late at night or in low light/bad weather, I want complete control of the camera, so it’s manual for that. And once in a blue moon, I will switch to one of the other two modes. If I am going to shoot action (maybe my granddaughter’s softball game), I switch to Shutter priority to ensure I freeze the action. When I want to isolate a subject, I might switch to Aperture mode to do that.

So I shoot photos and then put them in my MacBook Pro. Yes, that means I carry around a full-size laptop with me. I mentioned that my camera weighs almost five pounds, but my camera/computer bag weighs nearly 35 pounds. I try never to carry it but to always move it on top of either my or Kathleen’s carry-on roller bag.

As soon as I have time, I copy the images to a folder for that day, and then I open Adobe Bridge. Most photographers use Lightroom to process photos, but I started doing photography when I was a graphic designer, and we like Bridge. You can use any software; you just need one that lets you see the entire photo on a full screen. I go through my photos pretty quickly the first time. When I shot the 600+ photos on the day we were in Gearanger I needed to have a quick way to get through them. I call what I do “photo triage.” I go through my pics in pretty much a hurry. And when I see what one I like and want to come back and look at again, I hit the five key on my Mac. If I see a photo that I might like if I worked on it, I hit the four key. If I see one that goes into a specific category (like photos with family in them) I hit the three key. This adds a rating to the photo.

Then, I go through each of the ones tagged with a five and process them in the Adobe app Camera Raw. First, I set the white balance and exposure, and then, if the photo warrants it, I might add some clarity or vibrance. I also might up the sharpening. And if the sky is dead (that happens a lot), I might dehaze it a little.

Once I have done all the 5s, I look at the 4s again. If any are one-of-a-kind shots that I have to have, I will do my best to fix them. After that, I might work on the family pics, but I often transfer them to another folder to work on when I get home because I hardly ever use them on my blog.

Now I have all the Camera RAW files the way I want them; I have to turn them into JPEGs so they can be uploaded to the web. Luckily for me, there is a wonderful extension for Bridge and Photoshop (and I believe you can use it in Lightroom as well) called Image Processor. All I have to do is select all my five photos and tell Bridge to run them through Image Processor. The extension created a folder called JPEG within my existing folder and turned them all into high-end JPEGs. But I am still not done at this point. This whole process takes about 10 minutes of automated work on 50 photos.

I then open up an amazing piece of software called Topaz Photo AI. This is the most fantastic software ever because it goes through all the photos in the JPEG folder and looks at them to see what might be improved, and then it uses AI to fix them. It is amazing with noise and sharpening. Just amazing. But this takes a little time—about 20 minutes for 50 photos.

Lastly, I have to shrink the photos. I could upload the original Topazed photos, but they are HUGE! The average size of the JPEG file after being run through Topaz is more than 15 megabytes. If I had to upload those size files, I would never have gotten a single picture online to add to the blog. And to see them in all their glory on a digital screen, you don’t need the high resolution. This means that they must be shrunk. To do that, I created a script in Photoshop to do that. It opens the larger file, shrinks it to a smaller size (usually about 2 megabytes) and saves the file. It is quick, and I don’t have to do anything while it runs. Fifty photos take about two minutes. Amazing.

Now I can start writing my post and adding the photos. But when do I do all this on a cruise? First thing in the morning. I am not a big sleeper. I get to sleep right away, but my need for sleep is less than most. I usually get by on six hours. So that means I am generally awake between 4:00 a.m. and 5:00 a.m. I grab my laptop and head up to the upstairs of the Explorer’s Lounge, sit on one of two couches, take my shoes off, put my feet up and sometimes I process photos and then write and design the post. Hopefully, I get done with it before Kathleen wakes up around 6:30 and texts me that she is up and out of the shower. I also squeeze in some time in the afternoons.

If you liked the photos I posted for this trip, I invite you to take a look at my portfolio. Just click the link in the menu bar above to see my best stuff.

Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever… it remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.  —Aaron Suskin

Beautiful but Dangerous Bergen

by | Jun 29, 2024 | Uncategorized

For this post, I am going to tell you about our visit to Bergen right up until it became the worst day of the trip for me. It could have been much worse, but thankfully it wasn’t. We did like the city; I am just not that impressed with some of the populace.

We arrived early on Thursday. Of course, I was awake and took photos out on the deck in front of the Explorer’s Lounge.

Please excuse this editorial interruption, but I want to mention something while I am writing about the beautiful deck in front of the Explorer’s Lounge on deck seven.  About 90% of the photos I have taken while sailing into and out of someplace have been taken from that deck. It is easily accessible to every person on the ship. Anyone can go to the Explorer’s Lounge, open one of two doors and step out onto that deck for a beautiful view ahead of the ship. I point this out because on our former favorite cruise line, Celebrity, in their new E-Class ships, you can’t look forward to where the ship is going UNLESS YOU ARE IN A SUITE.

Our friends who still cruise Celebrity tell us that Viking is so much more expensive. But if I have to choose between a suite on a Celebrity ship in order to have access to the entire ship or our Penthouse verandah on Viking at just about the same price, I choose Viking. Besides treating me like I am in steerage unless I get a suite, Celebrity also gives me a “suite only” restaurant (where I can’t eat with my friends who are not in a suite) and they have all the things about cruise ships that Viking doesn’t (like kids, a casino, art auctions and more).

Viking gives every single person on the ship the exact same thing. Yes, if you get a Viking suite, you can purchase shore excursions and make dining reservations earlier than others. Still, once you are onboard, everyone is like everyone else except for the size of their stateroom. And that’s why we switched. So I could look forward as we sailed into someplace and not be treated like a second-class passenger.

Back to our sail-in. It was a gorgeous day weather-wise, and I had lots of photo opportunities. Here’s my first batch. Don’t worry; there are nowhere near as many photos today as yesterday in my post on Gearanger. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping. And PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

I just remembered that I should mention that, like many Viking cruises, we were getting an overnight in Bergen before we disembarked on Friday. So today was a touring day. And we were booked on our usual, included “panoramic tour” of Bergen. We met our guide Nikolay on the pier, and we were off on our “luxury motor coach”. Even though Nikolay was from Germany and had only been in Bergen for a year, he did a very competent job. The first stop was downtown, where we could look back on the old port, then a visit to the basement of a church, which had been an old crypt but was now open to everyone for contemplation. Then, it was off to downtown, where we walked about six blocks through some old town area. All the way, Nikolay gave us a very informative talk.

Here are the photos with captions from our “Panoramic Bergen” excursion. Enjoy!

After the tour, just like usual, Kathleen and I were back on the ship for lunch while Steve and Jamie did an E-Bike tour with Viking. They really enjoyed it, so if you have a chance to do it, they endorse it.

After lunch, Kathleen went back to the stateroom to start packing for disembarkation the following day, and I headed back into town for an unexpectedly warm walk in the sunshine. I took lots of photos, so here’s another gallery.

And right after I took that last photo, it happened. My walk through beautiful Bergen took a bad turn when I was assaulted. It started with a young teen riding an electric scooter, passing me very closely while I was walking. He came so close I could feel him before I saw him out of the corner of my eye. I said Roy Kent’s favorite word. For those of you who have no idea who Roy Kent is, he is my favorite character on my favorite television show, Ted Lasso. His favorite word has four letters and starts with F. The kid (who was with another kid) turned and sneered at me, and then they went off down the road and turned a corner.

About five minutes later, I was still walking on the same residential street (looking for cool houses to photograph) when the same kid snuck up behind me again and passed me pretty quickly, but this time, he leaned toward me and pushed me out into the street. Luckily, no cars were coming, but I did take a pretty hard fall. Enough that my watch went off, asking me if I had fallen. Luckily for me, a very nice driver turned the corner just after the teens took off, and he stopped to check if I was OK. I debated calling the police but couldn’t identify the teens; there were no other witnesses, so why bother? Who knows what a pain that would have been to deal with?

I got up with a bruised knee and two bruised hands to go along with some road rash. I saved my camera—no damage, but I will be sore for a few days.

I was about two miles from the ship (on a total five-mile walk), so I got up, wiped off the blood and walked the rest of the way back to the ship. Got some ice on all of the bruises and bumps, left blood stains all over the stateroom (I felt bad about that) and limped around for the next day.

Of all the places I have walked around at crazy times taking pictures over the last 25 years, the last place I would have expected this to happen was Bergen, Norway.  I will be fine (everything except one thumb and the road rash feels a lot better two days later). And it could have been a whole lot worse. I could have broken my camera ?…or something else.

I didn’t want to spoil the cruise’s last night, so I made it up to the World Cafe for a final dinner (and a photo) with Steve, Jamie, Julie, Jamie and Kathleen. Not to mention the head waiter who managed to photo-bomb us. One of his staff members was taking the photo, so he couldn’t tell us what his boss was doing. But his boss was one of the nicest crew members we met all week, so we were OK with that.

Thanks to ice and Aleve, the next morning, I felt well enough to disembark (they wouldn’t give us a free cruise for something that happened in Bergen ?) so we grabbed an Uber and headed to our home for the night, the Moxy Hotel. It was a nice enough hotel, but when I booked it, the website said they were at the top of the port area. Well, Bergen has two (or maybe three) port areas. We wanted to be near where the ship docked in the interesting part of town. Instead we wound up a 2000 Kroner (for those who want to know, that’s about $20—transport is expensive in Bergen) Uber ride away from there (it was only 1.9 miles to walk from the ship to the hotel, but 6.4 miles to drive there due to one-way and pedestrian streets). Better planning next time. Bergen looks small on a map.

The hotel was very nice, but obviously, we were not their demographic. They are looking for 30-50-something tech professionals. Not 70+ retired people. But it was still OK. After we were off the ship (easiest disembarkation ever), at 9:00 a.m., we were at the hotel by 10:00. Of course, we didn’t expect our room to be ready. Check-in was at 3:00 p.m., but the nice person at the front desk said it should be ready by 1:00 or so. Since we knew this was going to happen, we had planned a couple of things to do in the meantime.

First up was the Bergen funicular. We decided to go there first because we had heard that by 10:30 a.m., it was a madhouse. We arrived just before 10:00 and made it up to the top in no time. We didn’t have to wait in line at all. We bought our tickets and jumped on. By the time we came back down around 11:00, the line was halfway down the street. If you go, go early! We took some great pictures while we were up there. Here’s the result.

That about covers our day. We did a little shopping, dodged a terrific rainstorm by having lunch in a nice restaurant, and then returned to the hotel. By that time, we were both just wiped out. We didn’t even go out to dinner. I canceled our reservations, and we just went down to the hotel bar and had a drink and a flatbread. If you ever stay there, know that their flatbread is really flat…it’s a flour tortilla ?. That’s OK, after the last month of eating out everywhere we went, we didn’t need any more food. It was good to skip a meal.

This morning (Saturday, June 29), we headed to the airport early and caught our first flight from Bergen to Copenhagen. It went just fine, but when we got to Copenhagen, we ran into problems. We only had about 70 minutes to change planes for our flight to London, and we figured since we were on the same airline, we would be close. First, our flight was about 15 minutes late getting in, then when we left our arrival gate, the board above the door said it was a 12-minute walk to our gate. They didn’t mention Passport Control (why do you have to go through that just to pass through a country and never leave an airport???) or the fact that the woman directing traffic at Passport Control told us we couldn’t use the ones for our D gate but had to walk past our gate to the E gates and go through Passport Control there…and then come back to our D-Gate inside security. This was not a 12-minute walk. This was about a 25-minute walk.

As we walked towards the E-gate Passport Control, we walked by our gate D-103 and we talked to someone at the gate, but he told us he could not let us in there and that we had to go to Passport Control and return on the upper level. I told them I wasn’t sure Kathleen’s knee could make it that far and back before the flight left. He said he would order us a wheelchair, which would be there in 15 minutes, and that would get us cleared right through. We waited 20 minutes until we could see them boarding our flight at the gate right above us, and we decided to walk it. We finally found the E gates Passport Control, and another couple headed for our flight was there. They helped us get through, and the folks in line were nice enough to let us go to the front of the line. Once through there, we had to hike back to our gate. I went ahead and told Kathleen I would make that plane wait if I had to hijack it ?. Luckily, I didn’t have to go that far, but we were supposed to be in the first group to board, and I think we were about the last people on board. Maybe five got on after us. I chastised the gate agent who had promised us a wheelchair and told him he had almost made us miss the flight.

When we boarded our SAS flight, one of the attendants noticed Kathleen was wearing a knee brace and limping (pretty badly by then), and she immediately got ice for her knee. She was awesome. I mean REALLY AWESOME because while we were in the air, she radioed ahead to Heathrow and had a wheelchair waiting for us. The man who they sent to push the wheelchair was AWESOME as well. He not only got us through Passport Control at Heathrow in about three minutes (the lines looked to be about a 30-minute wait), he helped us with our bags and took us all the way to the Hilton Garden Inn at Terminal 2, where we are spending the night tonight before flying home to Seattle in the morning. That’s where I am sitting, finishing up this post. Part of the day was a bust, but it turned out OK in the end.

That about covers Bergen and the day after. My plan is to sum this all up (the cruise) while we fly home tomorrow. At least, that’s my plan now. It depends on how tired I am. But we don’t fly until noon, and we will be home by 2:45 p.m., so we shall see how much I can get done in two hours and 45 minutes ?. Stick with me; we are almost done. It’s hard to believe we left our house a month ago, on May 30th and will get home tomorrow, June 30th. Home sweet home.

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.  —Winston Churchill

 

 

 

Gorgeous Geiranger

by | Jun 28, 2024 | Uncategorized

WARNING! This is a LOOOONNNNGGGG post. Feel free to read it in two or three parts. But there are a lot of beautiful pictures of Norway.

As we were ending our day last night, I told Kathleen that while I still thought Scotland was the most naturally beautiful place in the world, Norway had to be a close second. This has been an amazing trip so far because we have been able to visit both these places and see their incredible beauty. We had been impressed with Norway so far, but when we sailed into Geiranger that went over the top—this place is incredible.

If you have never sailed into or out of Geiranger on the Geiranger fjord, you need to do it. The night before we arrived, our wonderful cruise director André had told us that the sail-in would begin up the fjord at 4:30 a.m. But he reminded everyone that we would also sail out in the afternoon, and it would be much better weather then. Of course, the photographer and writer in me wanted both. So there I was at 4:30 a.m., standing outside the Explorer’s Lounge in the rain, taking pictures.

As any good photographer will tell you if you have a chance to shoot something twice—in a different light—do it! So I did. And I was glad I did because natural beauty comes in many forms, both wet and dry, dark and light and getting to shoot Geiranger fjord was worth getting up early. I am going to shut up now and post the photos of the sail-in, and you can see what I mean. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping. And PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

A slight problem here. WordPress (the software I use to create this site) won’t let me add more photos to that gallery. So here are more, starting with The Seven Sisters.

One other photo I want you to see so I can reference it later is this one of the village of Geiranger. Pay special note to the waterfall that flows down to the town. If you look closely (you can click the photo to enlarge it), just to the right of the waterfall is a staircase. We were told it has anywhere from 321 to 384 steps. My brother Steve and I climbed it a few hours later—more about that, with photos below.

Our morning was planned for us as we had signed up for the included shore excursion, “Panoramic Geiranger.” So at 9:10 a.m., we piled onto our “luxury motor coach” and were off up the mountain to see the incredible views. Sadly, some of the folks who had the early excursions saw nothing but clouds. Clouds from the bottom, the middle and the top. Which means they basically saw nothing. Those of us with the later excursion had better luck.

Our first stop was a gorgeous alpine lake at the very top of a long set of hairpin-turn switchbacks (which I kept my eyes shut for—pretended to be asleep—don’t tell anyone, but I am afraid of heights). There we were, above the clouds. The photo at the very top of this post is of that lake. There is not a lot else to take photos of at the top—a little gift shop, pay toilets and a restaurant.

Then, it was back down the hill to a spot that overlooked Geiranger. When the “luxury motor coach” first pulled over, we were still socked in with clouds, but by the time we had been there about 10 minutes, it cleared up. YAHOO! Here are a couple of shots I got from this stop.

After this, we went down the switchbacks (I kept my eyes closed again) to the bottom. I breathed a sigh of relief when we got there because I thought we were going back to the ship…but no…we were going up another set of switchbacks that were even worse. And when we got to the top to take pictures, we were in a cloud/fog and couldn’t see a thing. So much for that. Once off the second hill, we were off the “luxury motor coach” and back on Venus for lunch. After lunch, Jamie and Kathleen went back to their respective staterooms to nap, and Steve and I climbed the staircase next to the waterfall. It was an amazing walk, as you can see from my photos. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping. And PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

After we were back down from the waterfall staircase, Steve and I  did a little shopping (or tried to) and went back to the ship (Geiranger has a cool floating dock that extends into the fjord, and you get to walk off the ship and in to dry land in about five minutes—there’s a picture of it in the slides below.) About an hour later, as we headed up to dinner at the World Cafe, the captain announced we were leaving Geiranger and that the sail-out would be much different than the sail-in early that morning. If you don’t believe him, here are the photos I got as we sailed up the fjord.

That’s about it for Geiranger. As you can tell, it was quite the day. We had every kind of weather you can have (except snow—thankfully), and we got to see the best of the fjords in the best of ways. The next day we would be in Bergen. We had heard amazing things about Bergen but our first day there would turn out to be the worst day (for me) of the entire trip. More soon.

Many a calm river begins as a turbulent waterfall, yet none hurtles and foams all the way to the sea.  —Mikhail Lermontov

A Long and Beautiful Day in Tromsø

by | Jun 24, 2024 | Uncategorized

Your favorite travel blogger (hopefully, that is me) really cares about you getting the complete travel experience. Since I am currently blogging a cruise called “Into the Midnight Sun.” I thought I better ensure you got a photo of…the midnight sun. And there it is…right above this paragraph. Before we went to bed on Saturday night (after leaving Honningsvåg), I set a silent alarm on my watch to wake up at midnight. When it went off, I checked outside our stateroom window to see if we were clouded over. If we were, I was going back to bed. But no such luck. The sun was up. It’s not high in the sky, but it’s definitely still up.

So I got up, got dressed, went up to the front deck outside the Explorer’s Lounge, and took this shot and one other I like a little more (but this one fits the page better), then I went back to our stateroom, got out of my clothes and went back to bed. But not before setting another silent alarm for 5:00 a.m. because that was when the Captain had said we would be sailing into the beautiful area that leads to Tromsø. Was he ever right? I have taken around 300-400 photos on almost every other day of the cruise. Between midnight and 9:30 Saturday night, when I went to bed, I shot 1,131 photos. Don’t worry; I am not going to make you look at all of them. I have reduced the total to around 85 and will break it up into smaller groups. I wish there weren’t so many, but I could not cover the city and the beautiful weather without them.

So here’s the first batch from our sail-in. The day was remarkable. The weather was incredible. I will try to put captions on all of them, but some need no explanation. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping. And PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

The sail-in went on for quite a while. The captain had said in his noon announcement the day before that we would cross under the Tromsø bridge at approximately 6:00 a.m., and he was right. We did. Here are the photos of that crossing.

Tromsø is on an island. As we approached the island, there are two bridges, and the harbor was on the other side of both of them. Unfortunately, a ship the size of Viking Venus can’t fit under the older bridge, so we went under the new bridge and then had to sail all the way around the island to get to the port almost underneath the lower and older bridge. But that was OK with me because it provided me with even more photographic subjects.

After we docked, it was time for our (you guessed it) our “luxury motor coach” panoramic tour of Tromsø. This would be one of the best we have had. We jumped on the bus with our guide, Mirko Maiutto (sounds Italian to me), and we were off to the University in Tromsø (the Fighting Ravens), where we stopped for 40 minutes or so to watch a movie in their planetarium. Usually, this would have put me to sleep, but this one was about the aurora borealis, and we loved it. It was made by a local Tromsø filmmaker, and he did an outstanding job; their planetarium is very cool, with wonderful seats.

After that, it was time to tour the rest of the islands. Mirko was an excellent guide, and we learned a lot. You will have to read the captions on the photos to see what we did. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping. And PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

After our tour with Mirko, we had some lunch, and I headed out for a long walk. I toured the harbor area, found the start of the old bridge and decided to walk across to the Arctic Cathedral to get some close-ups. Then, I walked back to the downtown area to get a closer look at some of the things we had seen on our panoramic “luxury motor coach” tour. It turned into a two-hour, six-mile walk, but the weather was so beautiful it barely felt like it. Here are the shots I got on that walk. Enjoy.

Sadly, I took several beautiful panoramic shots in Tromsø. Still, after combining them in Photoshop (one of my panoramic shots is usually composed of more than ten individual photos stitched together), they are just too large to upload with the current internet connection. The one at the top of this page is just one of the nine I wish I could include in this post.

That about does it for Tromsø. As you can see, it was a BEAUTIFUL day, and we had a wonderful time. Tomorrow, I will tell you all about the city of Bodø. The only hiccup this week is that Kathleen has now caught a cold. She keeps telling me it’s not my cold she caught because it has been too long since I had it, but at least I am over mine and can fully empathize with her.

Adventure is just bad planning.  —Roald Amundsen

Sea Day

by | Jun 17, 2024 | Photography

Good day, all! There’s not much to report today as yesterday was a sea day, and I gave my camera the day off except for this photo of a lonely, abandoned oil platform in the North Sea. That’s the only photo I took all day long. (The photo on the top of the page is a pano I took of the Observatory in Greenwich the day before.) But today, we were in Edinburgh, and we had a beautiful sail-in to the port of Rosyth early in the morning, so I hope to have some great pictures for tomorrow.

I want to write a short report about a sea day on Vikings. Yesterday was my 22nd day on a Viking Ocean ship, and it was my first sea day. You see, our cruises in the Med were all port days. So, I had no clue what would happen on a Viking sea day. Yesterday I found out, and the answer is…not a lot. The Daily was full of some lectures, trivia right at lunchtime, some entertainment around the ship, and that’s it. No waterslides, go-carts, ice skating, belly flop competitions, or fully-dressed water volleyball matches against the officers. We got none of that. And that’s why we sail Viking. We aren’t looking for that kind of thing. We wanted what we got. A day of rest (especially for Kathleen and I, who have been on the go for 16 days). It allowed me to work on all those photos I posted yesterday from Greenwich.

Ask me again how I like it in about a week when we have two full days at sea. But in the meantime, we have three straight port days, so I am not sure when you will get the next post about Edinburgh. I need to work on the photos now, so I will sign off and say that the weather here in Edinburgh has been good to us and that as many times as we have been here, we still love this city.

The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.  —Jacques Yves Cousteau