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

Looking down the sight to the Magic http://bit.ly/Am0Pwn

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.

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.

Drawings of the Animators

Animators Palate was my favorite guest restaurant as it is the most interesting. This restaurant alone cost over $5 million if I remember correctly. The whole place, including the waiters, changes colour halfway through the meal and on some nights Sorcerer Mickey comes in parades around the restaurant.

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.

Preludes on the Disney Magic

Deck 4 on the Disney Magic cruise ship was home to many things but one of them was the Walt Disney Theatre. The entrance of this was called Preludes and was home to a large picture of Disney himself.

We set up character lights here nearly every day and was a place the the big Mouse and friends would come and sign autographs and take photos. after setting up here many times you hear enough tours to pick up a bit of trivia, so here it is… There is one thing missing from the photo of Walt Disney……. Can you guess?…… no not mickey…… he always had a cigarette in his hand but it was photoshopped out for this mosaic.

There trivia done and I think that I actually said part of the tour word for word.

Palm Trees in Paradise

Another photo from the Disney Island, Castaway Cay. Many of you have seen lots on images from the bahamas that I have posted that I took on my travels. This is from a place called Pelican Point looking back onto the Disney Magic ship.

It was taken while I was walking up the beach front taking photos of guests as they enjoy themselves on the island. I always carried a separate memory card so I could quickly swap for personal use. I had to be quick on changing to shooting to RAW aswell and not forget to change back which actually happened once.

Deck 9 on the Magic

I had such a great time working on the Disney Magic Cruise Ship. It is an amazing place to work at as you can imagine. Disney does do all things that you thought impossible.

I think HDR is the only way to do the ship justice. It captures all the colour and texture of the surroundings which is made more intense at night.