Grav's Alaskan Adventure: Day 4

I'm in the generational gap between these age groups.

The day was fairly quiet, not a lot to report. We slowly moved up the channel of the inside passage off the western coast of Canada. The ship had a lot of activities and the sun was shining -- however, most of it was geared for one to two generations before or after myself.


There are not very many thirty to forty somethings and all of them are either coupled off or coupled off with kids. If I were not here to take one potentially last trip with my mother, this boat definitely would be the wrong demographic for me. You can only photograph so many island shorelines with snow covered peaks before it gets a little redundant.

I tried photographing some whales with limited success. If you are planning on shooting whales, here is some advice: First have either a good point and shoot with image stabilization with 10x-12x OPTICAL zoom or a 75mm-300mm with image stabilization. I don't really shoot a lot of telephoto, so I have a cheap telephoto that does not have image stabilization. My main lens goes up to 105mm, but that is not near enough to pull in the wildlife and almost anything I shot with my telephoto on the boat was too soft. I will be using my dad's point and shoot for wildlife before this trip is over. Next trip I will either have a better telephoto or a higher end super zoom point and shoot.

Second tip is don't move around too much. It actually lessens your chances of a good shot. It is just like hunting deer, accept you are using a camera and your prey is harder to catch.

After I gave up on scenic photography for the day, I milled around the ship bored out of my gourd. I finally broke down and snagged some trash fiction and drank tea until dinner.

Here is my final bit of advice: Days at sea generally call for formal dining of an evening. We did not realize this and came under dress. They will give you a loner coat, but don't be that guy. It's embarrassing.