Here's the UK collection of cruise photos. Trust me - I save you a LOT of grief - if you're going to look at them. I shaved off over 500 pictures for this - down to no more than 150 pictures. Plus, I tell you some fun stories.

Hope you enjoy! I enjoyed putting this all together. Was really fun researching some places, too!

Here's my latest album posting - these are from tours of Stockholm. I took the pictures from about 370 down to about 130 - fewer than half!!

Enjoy!!

Great food (I gained only 5 pounds in 2.5 weeks of EATING my heart out), great towns visited, great memories, and lots of pictures (6000+ to put it mildly). It's going to take a while to edit and post those pictures, but can't wait to dive into them!!

We visited London, Harwich, Salisbury, and Amesbury (along with Stonehenge and Wood Henge), Amsterdam, Rostock & Warnemuende (Germany), Stockholm, Helsinki, St. Petersburg, Tallinn (Estonia), and Copenhagen. Every night I slept about 6-7 hours a night, drank 2-3 glasses of wine each day - or 3-7 beers each day, depending on which country we were visiting (Germany was the absolute best for the beer and we visited a local brewery - YAY!!), had the odd martini, and smoked quite a few cigarettes (I know - bad Steve!).

Being with my dad for that concentrated time (17 days) and proximity (8' x 10' room with a balcony - adding to that a HUGE ship to get lost in) was interesting and very educational indeed. I learned a lot about him as a person now like what it means for him to be 85, how to work within his moods, how to care for him, and what to do in certain situations. I'm sure that my new knowledge and exposure won't help my siblings much in their own interactions with him, but at least they'll see a definite change in me and our relationship. And it's all good.

Granted, there were times that I wanted to jump off the ship - that's when I went for a drink. Or times I wanted to argue till the cows came home - that's when I went for a smoke. But all in all we had a blast and I would have regretted not doing it - no matter the cost.

More to come about the trip and pictures, but thanks to all who wished me well on the journey - the wishes and good tidings really helped!

Today, a buddy of mine and I met for lunch at The Dish in Chelsea. I toted along my new Nikon D40 that some of you are familiar with already (from previous posts or replies). mondragon and I exchanged a couple of things today about his expired film work, developing them, and so forth. He does EXCELLENT work and I'm always impressed and in awe of the things he puts out. Great eye and composition.

Here is my first day breaking in my new camera that I bought from my partner's brother-in-law for a wonderful price. I've painstakingly picked out initially two really good lenses for it over the last month or so, along with a mounted flash (more for indoor and portrait shots) and two filters. I discovered today that I have to be more selective with the filters, even though they happily lend themselves to multiple mounting. One gets a black blur in the corners of the photos because the lens "expects" perhaps only one filter. Otherwise, I will expect to do some cropping and have to plan out the extra space needed to crop out the blurs.

I was working on field depth as well as the automatic settings that highlight either greater aperture or greater shutter speed. The photos with motion blurs are with a extended aperture, and the pictures with deep shadows are with quicker shutter speeds. All today were taking with the 18-55mm lens including both a UV and polarizing filter.

#1 - Joyce Theater Marquis (done with the Automatic everything setting)


#2 - Uptown Shot of 8th Ave from Chelsea (higlighted shutter speed - deeper shadow)


#3 - Uptown Shot of 8th Ave from Chelsea - Taxis in motion (higlighted aperture - greater blurs)


These are just a few. I'll post more tomorrow after I've looked at them a little more. There's one below that shows the profound corner blurs that I was mentioning due to the filters (I believe). I'm going to remove one of them to see if it makes a difference, and it really should. I will have to be more judicious with their use over time.

#4 - 6th Ave Library (served as background in The Fisher King) - Auto Setting - stark blur


All in all in was a good test day.