Are the photographers real photographers?

[Sparkygirl]

The quality varies widely, and there are also different companies on different ships (I think.)

 

I do agree it's a volume business, but I would assume that selling more copies of less shots would be a good thing.

 

We have had "portrait" photographers fuss over where our hands were, where our feet were placed, and they still end up producing snapshots.

 

Part of the issue may be that I'm sure the post-processing is automated in Photoshop or similar, so there is not a lot of human care involved. My wife will spend hours in Photoshop, editing a single photo simply because she can. The ship's photographers are on deadlines, so I presume they run an action that tries to fix the contrast, balance the light and crop to the requested size automatically. You won't get consistent results that way unless you have complete control (background, lighting, posing) over the shoot, like the portrait guys do.

 

The selling point they have is that short of handing your camera to a stranger, it's the only way to get a photo of your entire group. So, for some, they will buy a photo or two because they want a memory, not matter how poorly composed. This, I think, is why the companies don't hire photographers, they hire people who can learn to use the cameras over time.

 

 

There is human involvement in the post processing and editing all you have to do is ask. My mom wore a green shirt on embarkation day and it was a green screen photo. She was wearing the ship. We gave it to the photo staff and a few hours later it was fixed and ready. We also know that a photo we were given was also fixed as it was from the Capt greeting with the Capt name but didn't have the captain. The text was changed to the individual in the photo and my daughter's name.

 

 

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[Bird in Jersey]

We have never even bothered getting boarding pictures taken, or those with characters when getting on or off at ports. However, whenever the photographer comes round when we are eating, we usually let them take the picture, although we have no intention of buying.

 

We do usually have a look at the pictures to see just how bad they are (not the photographers fault, they can only work with what they have available :) ). On our last cruise they were in fact very good, and we did buy a couple. We discussed it afterwards, and we were pretty sure that the ones we liked were taken by the same person.

 

I agree. The boarding pictures, characters and dining pictures are the worst(usually because there is someone in the background of your picture). The formal pictures are better, but on the BA last year, I was not impressed with all of the pictures. We take a boarding picture, but walk past all of the other port photographers. No longer worth my time to stop.

[GoAndHaveFun]

For the people in costumes wanting to take a pic when we disembark at a port of call, I just keep walking lol. I always feel a lil bad at teppanyaki as they would take a pic of us with the chef and then distribute the photos after dinner to see if we want to buy. We never buy them.

[watchdiva]

On our recent Pearl cruise, we scheduled a studio photo shoot with Prestige (IIRC). The shoot was almost an hour and involved numerous pose changes, running and walking shots, etc. when we went to view the photos a few days later we were astounded at the quality of all of the shots. The young woman who took the photos was professional and made sure that we were relaxed and wouldn't stop shooting until she got the shots she wanted. If you have a chance to do this I highly recommend. We don't get embarkation photos, character photos, restaurant photos, etc but these photos from the private shoot were extraordinary!