(Today’s Chronicle can be found here.)
It’s… (drumroll) another sea day!
I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, part of me is genuinely sad that the cruise is coming to an end.
On the other hand – land awaits. Sweet, stable land.
But there’s nothing I can do to make the time pass at any rate other than one minute per minute – either to abridge or to lengthen – so we’ll just take the day as it comes. We start with La Terrazza for breakfast, and then I carry on into the mobile photography portion of my masterclass.
Bogdan passed along a lot of helpful tips. I already knew that I could touch the screen to focus on a particular element, but I didn’t know that I could press and hold to get autofocus lock.
Or that I could slide up and down the screen in order to change the exposure level. (Adjusting the little sun on the side of the autofocus block.)
We then moved on to portrait mode, which allows you to control the aperture the same way as you can in a much more expensive camera – a low aperture number gives you a blurry background which helps make the subject stand out.
But you can revert from portrait to a regular photo – one with everything in focus – by using the editing menu. (You can only go from a portrait to a regular photo when editing – not from photo to portrait.)
Newer iPhones also have a ‘macro’ mode which lets them take photos of objects close up. A little flower automatically appears in the corner of the screen when macro mode is engaged.
You can turn this off by tapping the flower.
Other tips included using ‘live’ mode to turn photos into long exposure shots, like this one of the passing ocean:
And swiping up to pull up additional photography options, such as exposure, size, tone, delay, and filter:
It was a really helpful class. I should have made time for it earlier in the cruise, but I’m glad we got there before disembarkation!
We also got into the basics of how to use Adobe Lightroom. I’m still in the early stages, but I’m really impressed by how Lightroom is able to isolate individual subjects and pull out details that would otherwise be lost.
Meanwhile, my wife and daughter took in a towel folding demonstration. Our daughter was particularly pleased with this penguin she made:
This was followed shortly thereafter by a cornhole tournament.
Off for a brief round of walkies, where we were thoroughly soaked with rain – we tried pushing through, but it just kept pouring down.
We then went to lunch, where I had a delicious chicken korma:
Which was paired with a margarita that went with the tex-mex buffet – but I have no regrets about the korma.
Brief break for writing and homework, then we went off to the navigation workshop:
We all really enjoyed using the divider to measure the distance between two points, and then comparing that distance to the latitude chart to figure out exactly how far it is between points. One ‘minute’ (1/60th of a degree) is equal to 1 nautical mile. You have to use latitude as that’s the scale that the distances are based on, and longitude changes at a different rates as you get closer to the points.
Off to tea at La Terrazza, which was a special treat:
This is the first time I’ve managed to take part, as it’s typically held at the same time as trivia. I did duck out briefly for Italian Trivia with future cruise manager Joshua, but our team was thoroughly trounced. Ah, well!
Off to Jess’s presentation where she explored the concept of ‘natural capital’, in which we attempt to put a price on nature so that we can measure the impact when nature is destroyed.
She used the analogy of comparing the values of Amazon the company versus the Amazon rainforest – the rainforest performs critical functions in our environment, which makes it infinitely more valuable than any company, even Amazon.
Jess also explored the downsides to this model, which is the possibility that it could enable the ultra-rich to justify the destruction of precious environments on the basis that they paid sufficient offsets, and the risk of pricing out indigenous and vulnerable groups from their own environments should they be unable to ‘pay’ for even a modest environmental footprint.
It was a very balanced presentation, and I expect we’ll be seeing more of this model in the future – and that the concept of natural capital will continue to evolve to deal with these limitations.
Off to briefings and recaps. Jamie confirms that the storm system is expected to catch up with us over the next day with swells building to 3.8 metres.
He also fields some questions from the question box, including one as to whether the Wind will be visiting ‘Null Island’ (0 degrees latitude and 0 degrees longitude) during the next leg of the voyage.
There is no actual island there, but rather it is marked with a buoy. Sadly it is out of the way and so the Wind will not be visiting it – but it was interesting to learn of its existence.
Martin then provides a recap of the limited wildlife we saw today – a sperm whale! – and gave a joking look at his omni-present waterproof camera case, in which Martin claims to keep mascara, a hairbrush, moisturizer, and other sundries.
Jess then gives a recap advocating for journalling, and encourages each of us to write a letter containing words of advice for our ten-year-old self.
She personally uses a physical line-a-day journal, but also recommends Day One for journalling or the included Journal app on iPhone.
Off for dinner at the Restaurant. My wife and I both start with the Lumpia Shanghai, a fried spring roll with pork and prawn filling:
This is easily one of the most delicious dishes we’ve had since we boarded.
We then have the roast tenderloin for our mains:
And I have the lemon meringue pie for dessert:
While our son has the eclair:
We’re moving ahead one last hour tonight, so it’s early to bed tonight! We’ll be quite glad to be in one timezone for more than 2 – 3 days at a time.