The early days of the Diamond Princess, new roommate, a happy photo team & the legend of Joaquin

Handover with Marek was the definition of smooth, no issues and he was even slightly complimentary about Chad which was a surprise, however as I would learn in the previous year or so the Diamond had been one of the best party ships in the fleet. This time I had just missed working with my fellow first contractor Amanda which would have been 3 times in my first 4 contracts but I’d only heard great things about the ship from her.

This was probably the first time I saw Reflections DVD promos with the videographers in it themselves, Marek had made one with his previous junior an American guy called Nathan which was brilliantly executed and showed them at all the onboard ship events and filming ashore, it was slick, professional, informative and actually funny. I’m fairly certain I would have died on the spot if I had to do something similar which fortunately we didn’t at this point.

Marek then showed me one of the single greatest videos I’ve seen in my life, 3 of the guys on and pretty much all the photo team decided to make a shot for shot remake of The Lonely Island’s ‘On A Boat’ song which they lip synced along too. Not knowing at the time this was a spoof remake it was only a few years later when I saw the original that I was even more impressed at how they'd almost shot for shot remade it! After it was posted online some people at head office were not too happy and it was quickly taken down and I believe some warnings were issued, however in this day and age a viral video showing the crew enjoying themselves would be a brilliant marketing tool if head office had the vision.

What was apparent from day one onboard was that this was a great ship with a good atmosphere with some familiar faces including Marty the crazy Canadian production guy who was partly responsible for my first contract warning when he drunkenly launched the remnants of my birthday cake down a passenger corridor.

We had a truly international photo team on the Diamond, Kirsty the overall photo manager was Kirsty from NZ, Scott from England my Sapphire roommate was gallery manager, and Joaquin from Colombia was the lab manager in charge of the machines and printing, On the photo team we had Bob from Serbia, G from Hungary, Veronica & Dellany from Brazil, John & Alan from the Philippines, JC from Portgual, Cat from Thailand who was from my 1st contract and Sam from England from my 2nd on the sun, and then my new roommate also from England who had the ubiquitous nickname already of Fresh Meat. His actual name was Mark and it was his first contract but as he looked about 15 Cat had already nicknamed him and it stuck for a good portion of the contract until the next new person when he was just bizarrely known as meat

It really was quite a happy photo team as at least half of them had been there under the previous manager Charlene when Amanda had been there and I’d only heard good things. It was a massive bonus having Kirsty as manager as she was the absolutely typical laid back Kiwi in all the best ways just like I remembered from my days on the Sun. My initial team meetings were the best I could remember as they were always positive and motivated you for the cruise rather than managers who would make us line up like we were being interrogated on why we didn’t make the budget that cruise.

The lab manager was Joaquin from Colombia and he was somewhat of a fleet legend in that whenever possible he would simply ignore passengers in the most polite way and there is an infamous story about him shooting ressie one night. Ressie is photog slang for when our department has to take pictures in the restaurant almost every night of the cruise, there is much debate amongst the photogs on what the worst shoot is, most would say formal night due to the never ending lines, some would say costumed gangway shoots and many would say Ressie.

Seriously, think about it most people take a picture these days at the start of a meal of themselves or there food, or at the very end of the evening, with Ressie shots our photogs have to go to every table in the restaurant and take shots of everyone in the restaurant usually mid meal which is a time when no one wants there picture taken. Well, the legend of Joaquin was that he once shot a whole restaurant, every picture in record time also without uttering a single word to anyone!

Apparently he would simply walk up to the table smile and gesture with his hands how he wanted the table to pose, I guess part of the con was probably making people think his english wasn’t very good (it was very good) but it was very smart as he was taking away the passengers option to say ‘No, I don’t want a photo’ but also it made him quicker. I never got to see Joaquin shoot as he now was an assistant manager and in charge of the photo lab, that meant rarely shot unless needed to cover illness or we were down a photog for any other reason. As lab manager he was responsible for making sure all 4 industrial sized printers we had were kept maintained and running smoothly and keeping an eye on print & image quality, I also think it is a dream job for the more technically minded photogs because it meant you had the least amount of dealing with the passengers.

You immediately know if you are on a happy photo team by how much the members of that team actually hangout in off time. On the Coral everyone on deck 9 would drink in the corridor every night whereas towards the end of my time on the Sun the photo team absolutely did not hang out at all. In a sign of things to come on a quiet night in the photogs corridor we’d sit around playing a networked Call of Duty on our laptops.

On a disco night half the crew bar would end up back in our corridor on deck 5 forward, Casino were the floor below us and the Shoppies were the deck above us. It’s funny as the older (in terms of this contract) crew said how quiet the ship was now compared to around 6 months ago so I can only imagine how great those days were on the Diamond. However now being a confirmed senior meant I was responsible for making sure we hit our Reflections DVD sales target.

Still we had a great run coming up, a happy team unfortunately I still had to deal with Chad!