Make the Most of Your Cruise Vacation Photos

Rhapsody of the Seas "Before" Photoshop

So, you’re on a cruise and all set to take some super vacation photos. You have plenty of media cards for your digital camera, plus extra batteries or a charger—you’re ready to record memories to last a lifetime.

Or maybe not. We’ve all snapped a shot of our loved ones in front of our ship only to see later that the people in the photo are barely recognizable—their faces are dark and everything behind them is bright. That mistake can be overcome with fill flash, so don’t forget to set your camera to flash in such situations. If you happen to get caught up in the moment and forget to adjust your camera settings (and we all do now and then!), there’s always Photoshop, or other photo editing programs, to fix the image in your computer.

Another huge mistake is not holding the camera level. That’s one of my big problems—I sometimes find my ship looks like it is listing.

Rhapsody of the Seas "After" Photo Editing

Take a look at the two photos I’ve added here on the blog. The “before” shot of Rhapsody of the Seas above is my blooper. While looking through my camera’s viewfinder, the image looked fine, but I wasn’t holding the camera precisely level. My camera has a “grid” that can be set to avoid that, but I don’t usually use it because the lines clutter up the viewfinder and I can’t always clearly see through them. However, all was not lost and I was able to fix it by using Photoshop to straighten out the image. The “after” image shows Rhapsody of the Seas as she actually looked. Still not perfect, but much better after “straightening” the horizon in the photo.

From a lot of the photos I’ve seen online lately, it seems that some amateur photographers purposely shoot their images at an angle. Maybe that’s a trendy way to take snapshots these days, but scrolling through a slideshow of images taken at a tilt can make you positively seasick. Unless you are a pro shooting an “artsy” or “edgy” image on purpose, keep in mind who is going to be looking at the photo and don’t do it. Trust me, it isn’t pretty.

Take my advice—use your flash to fill in shadows when needed and hold that camera as level as possible. In addition, get a photo editing program to clean up the images that need it. You want to take the best photos possible IN your camera, but if you goof, don’t hesitate to use photo editing.

Photos (c) CruiseDiva.com