It’s about time to do the annual 2024 post about my trip on the JoCo Cruise! As many of you know, for the last <mumble> years I have been working as the staff photographer for the JoCo Cruise that sails every year around the March timeframe. This year we sailed to Grand Turk, Dominican Republic, and Half Moon Cay. The list of performers is below:
If this is your first time hearing of the JoCo Cruise, it’s a week-long event on the Holland America ship Nieuw Amsterdam. From the listing of guests above you can see that it’s a gathering of Comedy, Authors, Music, and Gaming. More importantly it’s a chance for us to let our geek flag fly proudly among like minded people who enjoy fun and our chosen family.
This year was a kind of “back to basics” for the cruise as the general vibe felt much like some of the “Pre-Pandemic” cruises we had before the world fell apart. Everyone was very happy to be back and overall it felt great to be there. Running the photography team is always a fun time for me and we had some great volunteers on our Shutternauts team.
As an experiment in shooting, the rule I had for myself as well as the team was to try and capture more of the special moments and try different angles. In the past, most of my photos were just your standard “Here is a person on stage doing a thing” which is great for grabbing the image of the event, but it lacked the emotion behind the event. By getting in closer and seeing those facial expressions and the intent behind the show that was happening, I think we captured the real feel of the JoCo Cruise.
Here is a very small selection of photos taken from the cruise:
As an added bonus, this year I wore my Meta Ray-Ban glasses and was able to capture even more special moments. I will be doing a separate post about using the glasses in general daily life, but on the cruise, they were beyond my expectations on how they helped grab the action and life of the event. Here are some shots from the glasses:
You can find the full album of photos over on my flickr page
Once again, (and as always) Thanks to Jonathan Coulton, Paul & Storm, and Drew for bringing me back to capture all the magic that is the JoCo Cruise!