During our trip to Chernobyl, we got a chance to visit this children’s summer camp outside of Pripyat in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Like everything in the Zone, mother nature is taking over. There is something beautiful about this scene, in a sad way.
To view a larger version, click HERE
As you may have noticed, MJ and I have been away. We were on a cruise to celebrate our 26th Anniversary. They’ve been wonderful years covering the range of emotions, experiences and activities. I’m an extremely lucky guy.
Anyway, let’s talk about this photo and how I captured it. It is my habit when cruising to get up at least one morning at around 5am to walk around the cruise ship and photograph it. I like that time for a few reasons:
1. All the other tourist are sleeping off the previous night’s party, which means I have the ship to myself. And you know I don’t take many people pictures. If it weren’t for the few Carnival employees that are working, it would really look like a ghost ship.
2. Once I get done photographing the ship, it is usually time to capture the sunrise. So I get a two for one arrangement.
There is only one negative of my approach, the ship’s security team never know what to make of me. On this last trip, I counted no less then 6-security people following me around. A few of them talked to me, but the rest just watch from a distance. Normally you’ll never see a security person on a cruise except when you leave and enter the ship. But when I am out photographing the ship in the middle of the night, it must raise a red flag in the security department.
So this photo was captured at around 6am and you can see the moon is still high in the sky. And of course, it looks like I have the ship to myself.
To purchase a print or view the entire gallery, click the photo above.
Special note: If you’ve ever been on a cruise before, you know they try to take your photo all the time (because they want to sell you a print later). They’ll photograph you at dinner, boarding the ship, leaving the ship, on excursions, around the pool, etc…. One of their big things are to setup mini photo stations around dinner time so you can stop by and get your photo taken while you’re all cleaned up. Anyway, MJ and I were on our way to dinner one night and we saw this photography backdrop at one of the photography stations. What caught our attention is that this backdrop is of Pittsburgh. So all these people from around the United States, who are on the high seas in the Caribbean, were stopping to get their photograph taken in front of the Pittsburgh skyline. I thought that was interesting.
