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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.
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.
Castaway Paradise
The recent tragedy of the Costa Concordia cruise ship has made me think back to my experience on the Disney Magic. For those of you outside of Europe (or those of you that live in a hole), the cruise ship Costa Concordia owned by Carnival hit a rock off of Italy’s west coast. The ship was sailing from the port of Civitavecchia which is the main port of Rome. The boat I was on done the same journey as this one for 3 months so I know the area well. The death toll currently stands at 11 but there are still many people missing.
I was lucky enough to only have one emergency (but many medical emergancies, a story for another time). We discovered a fire as smoke pored through the ceiling in the atrium where were were taking photos. I won’t bore you with the procedures but basically we told the bridge and had to act like normal. If didn’t help that they announced “red parties”, a code term for fire, over the pa system that meant everyone was asking us what was going on. A fellow photographer said to a 6 year old boy that it meant that we hit a whale to much amusement to everyone around.
In the end the fire team put it out very quickly. It was caused by welding in the room above which set alight an empty stateroom.
This photo is another from Castaway Cay in the bahamas. You can see the Disney Magic cruise liner in the background docked at the disney island.
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.
A Disney Paradise
Who ever knew that it was so hard to post a video. Due to copyright issues to the soundtrack from torn in my time-lapse, some countries are not able to view it. I had to post it on a different sight that you can see here.
Right now onto todays photo. Another from Castaway Cay, Disney’s private island in the Bahamas. This jetty is just as you get off the ship on the way to the main part of the resort. You can see the typical Bahamian sky as great as ever.
Have a good weekend everyone.
Smoke at Castaway Cay
The ship never shuts down its engines while it is in port. I have no idea why so perhaps someone out there can tell me. This was taken, like many photos before, at Castaway Cay, Disney’s private island. You must be getting fed up of pictures from here. I have shown you so many but it really is a paradise island. I had more fun here they any other place we went and got to be here every week while we were in the Caribbean,
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.
Crew Members Only
A Photo from the Bahamas today taken on Castaway Cay. For those of you who haven’t been following me that long, this is the private Disney Island. I worked onboard the Disney Magic cruise ship for 6 months visiting all over the Caribbean and Europe.
This was taken at the entrance to the crew beach. I would spend all my off time on the island here. It wasn’t that much (perhaps an hour per visit) but it was the best hour of the week.
Boat Tied up in St Maartin
It was a long walk back to the ship in St Maartin so you could get a boat taxi if you desired. This wasn’t that boat fortunately but one along the long walk to what I called home at the time.
Relax in St Maartin.
St Maartin was our day of amazing pizza and internet. We always had to get a water taxi to the main beach where all of the restaurants and shops are. From there we would make are way to the Italian place. We did this pretty much every week but occasionally would spend some time relaxing on the beach aswell.
St Maartin was the first stop on the Eastern Caribbean cruise. It was the port where you could buy everything electrical for really cheap prices. I bough a canon S95 and my Nikon 50mm 1.4 lens but wanted to buy alot more.
When processing this image I found a guy sleeping under the bush on the left. He was a big surprise but what can I say; the Caribbean is very relaxed.
Italian in the Caribbean
I didnt get off much at Grand Caymen as I had to start work early so I used it as my sleep/laundry day. Exciting I know! The one time I did get off we went to a really nice italian restaurant. What made it better is that I went with 2 Italian friends. The view was great looking back over the Disney Magic.
