Hi, Hola, Bonjour , Ciao , مرحبا, 您好, bok, hei and welcome.

My name is James Murray and I live in London, England but love to go exploring in foreign climates. Coming from a design background I look at photography as an extension of this, recording the lifestyles and architecture that make up are world.

My passion for photography started when I first picked up a film camera (wow I miss the darkroom), capturing the moments of my accident filled childhood. I transferred this passion into my studies mixing in all of my design influences to create my own style.

Architecture and photography are the perfect blend each complementing the other. As a HDR (High Dynamic Range) enthuiast, I use this technique to enrich my images.

I have worked as a photographer since 2010, taking photos of the enviroment that I lived in around London, selling images as artworks and to companies. In 2011 I worked for Disney on their cruise ships with the big mouse himself. Onboard I worked as a portrait and wedding photographer, learning new techniques and feeding my travel bug.

Every photo is a memory; there is no better way to capture it then how you see it, not how the camera sees it.

 

Stacky Theme by Andrew

A shot that I should of taken a long time ago. http://bit.ly/GQST0S

Tiny Mickey

Last photo of the week now and one that I only processed yesterday. I found a lot of Disney Magic pictures that I haven’t processed that I feel are definitely worth the time.

A lot of my free time on the boat was walking around with my new 50mm 1.4 finding unique shots. While friends were sitting around the pool on deck 9 I started walking around the open decks on 9 and 10.

Its gonna be a cold one this weekend for those of you in England (and northern Europe) with snow here in London planning to fall on Saturday. I’m gonna have to wrap up warm and take photos over the weekend, I suggest that you do too.

Congratulations Disney Magic!

Todays photo is in honour of the Disney Magic Cruise ship. It has been voted the best cruise ship in the world by a survey carried out by contravener. Take a look at all of the results here.

I am proud to be a part of this and it was a great 6 months of my life. Mickey and I still keep in touch every now and then and he is going to head the celebrations on board (expect a lot of crew parties). You can see the beauty here docked in Castaway Cay (the Disney island for those of you new to the blog) in the Bahamas. I am always disappointed with the pictures of this place as the sky is never interesting although it was great weather all the time there apart from one accession where nature decided to bombard us with its monthly storm.

Magic in Key West

I have so many more photos of Key West left to share with you. It was my favourite port in the Caribbean and a close second overall. Everytime I got off there I would go mad with pictures. The place is so different to what I am used to and I would move there in a second.

You must get fed up of seeing this ship but it was my life for 6 months so tough luck. I can never get bored with it as it is such a beautiful place to be and you should go on it if you can.

Madeira Harbor

I was working a lot in Madeira so didn’t get much of a chance to go explore most of it. I went to the centre of town and then walked back through the harbor back to the ship. 

People always say to me that you have been to some great places. Yes I have but I have not seen them. I got to spend around 3 hours at a time exploring the places we went to which is not enough time to “see” places. I want to go back to some of the places to see the true side of them. One day I will.

You Cheeky Monkey

I got to know the monkeys well in Gibralter. I spent a whole day photographing guests with them on top of the Rock. They are everywhere, taking every bag that they come across. They are looking for food and snatch it away right from your hand. We would guess what guest would fall victim and it became a fun game.

This is one of the culprits relaxing after a long day of harrasing tourists. You can see the Disney Magic in the harbor below. Believe it or not we actually walked back to the ship from here. It took us forever as it was further then we thought.

Four in a Row

Hello and welcome to another week. Today is a photo from the Caribbean. I didn’t get off the ship much in Grand Caymen. It was generally used to catch up on sleep and do the laundry. I did venture out twice though and went to a nice Italian restaurant with some friends. On my way back I did a bit of my very own Urbex. Well sort of… I stepped over a badly placed bollard onto some wasteland to find this rotting boat.

You can see four cruise ships on port that day. The one in the centre is my home, the Disney Magic but I can’t remember the others. I think one was a Royal Caribbean and another a Carnival ship.

Signals on the Magic

The family pool, as you can imagine, was the most popular pool and was always full of guests. Even late at night there would be someone around enjoying some of the activities around. This was taken in the early hours of the morning just after I had finished work for the day.

The bar/restaurant on this part of the ship was called Signals, hence the name of the photo. I ate here a few times after a late finish and the food was really good. Anything was good compared to the crew food though.

The two covered pools in the foreground are jacuzzis that were always occupied mainly by teens who were socialising with new friends. Adults usually found sanctuary in the adult pool where it was alot more peaceful.