Flying Dolphins

Its been a little busy this week, as last Wednesday we did a partial Crew Change, where approximately half the crew got off on our Crew Boat, while the remaining crew looked daggers at them as they headed for Shore and onward freedom.
So for me, there were a few new faces, and names for me to promptly forget 10 seconds after being told.....a growing sign of "old timers" disease inexorably advancing through what passes as grey matter between my ears these days.

Dolphins

What was unexpected though was the send off they had from a pack of Dolphins, who seemed to take the opportunity to play around us, as the two Boats were together doing the actual passenger transfer. Unfortunately I had only bought my 35mm lens with me for this brief trip out here, so the two Photos you see, have been zoomed up 50% or so from the Original.

Flying Dolphin

I say "unexpected" in the above sentence, as its pretty well known on the Vessels that I work on, that I am always the last Person on board to actually see anything swimming. Its a running joke on board, that whenever I am called to the Bridge to see something interesting, it's invariably disappeared by the time I arrive, breathless and red faced on the Bridge, having climbed about 5 flights of stairs. Only to be then faced with the Smiling (leering ?) face, and helpful comment from the Officer on Watch, that "I have just missed the Shark, Whale, Seal, Turtle, and they were really close to the Boat as well",
However, on Wednesday I beat the odds, and it turned out a lucky, and privileged day for me, and hopefully the luck will continue for the remainder of the trip.

Peruvian Sunrise

I thought I would add a quick Sunrise photograph to the post as well, as its not often out here, that I have the opportunity to have some sight of land as a back drop for my Maritime Sunrises and Sunsets. I hope Scott at  Just Used Pixels will approve, as he does take some absolute stonkers of these over on his Blog.

Just as a footnote, thank you to those of you that have visited the Triple P Imaging page and emailed me, and yes I know the most recent photos are not included for sale yet; but the bandwidth and various firewalls that are in place while I am Offshore, prevent me from downloading the images to the portfolio. They should all be there within the next 2 weeks, when I finally get off this Floating Palace.

What to photograph from a Boat in the middle of Nowhere.

Well what can i say, its certainly been an interesting few days exploring the blog, playing with the design, trying to understand the new buttons and gizmo's etc and basically catching up a little.....it all makes you feel a little inadequate. I thought frikking technology was meant to make your life easier for Christs sake; feck knows what would happen if i turned on one of these new "dynamic" templates they (Blogger), offer by mistake. There must be a heck of a lot of seriously clever people out there to design this shit is all I can say, or there's a lot of people with a fair amount of time on their hands.....nice work if you can get it, or in my case understand it.

So what have I been doing these last 2 years you may (or most probably not) ask yourselves, firstly, no I have not been spending time at Her Majesty's Pleasure, but thanks for asking anyway....I have however continued to sail around in this wonderful world of Seismic that I have unfortunately found Myself unable to escape from. But hey, who would, when you can travel to such exotic locations as Gabon (Corrupt and ruled by a Dictator) , Cabinda (Completely corrupt and ruled by who the Feck knows), Guinea Conakry (Trainee corrupt as the Officials still smile as they rob you blind), and finally Norway (Tax Thieving Bastards). Norway gets the special mention, as they consider Foreigners who have the misfortune of sailing in their waters, should for that privilege pay their Countries NI contributions, which are set at something like 130% of your salary. Remember that when you vote for the buggers at next years Eurovision Contest, that's if you rather sadly watch it of course.

Anyway, photography....You are on a Boat, you don't see land, there's not a lot of Wildlife, especially if you are in the North Sea....so what the hell do you photograph apart from the Muppets you work with. Sunsets and Sunrises thats what. For me its a bit of a challenge, as you are on a moving boat ,so shutter speed has to be quite fast (that's as technical as I get), there's no point having a tripod either as you are going up and down; and to try and get a half way decent shot of some spectacular clouds and light you normally are shooting at either end of the day and therefore the ISO is up, which can create a graininess, which sometimes adds to the feel of the Photo.

The 1st Photo should be titled "Polution can be pretty" and is of an FPSO at Sunset about 100 miles offshore Aberdeen, on a fairly rare calm day. The 2nd is an early morning shot in the Moray Firth when we were sheltering from some bad weather....Yup the Bird was a fluke, and No it wasn't added in later as I am not clever enough for that shite; and the final picture was taken at the end of some fairly heavy weather we had had, which made for a pretty dramatic skyscape....just a pity the Tanker is not on the left of the picture, as that would have helped the composition a little.

Phew

Arrived back home, after about 8 hours of flying from The Kingdom.

Its always a great feeling to get back home, but when you are coming back from the puss pit of the World, its even better....

Immigration was as tedious as ever, with the Cretins in Dammam Airport doing everything possible to make you want to take them down a darkened alley, and basically beat the living crap out of them, if you ever had the chance in your fantasies. The sheer arrogance of these people is unbelievable,

if it wasn't for the huge numbers of Foreign hired help, this Country would still be one step below the Dark ages. There is something about that Country, their attitude to non Arabs, the way they treat their Women, the complete lack of distribution of wealth, that just gets my baser instincts rising to the surface.....but enough of that, I'm back Home for goodness sake, and Life is good.

The Wife looks great, and is even happy to see my Ugly Mug, a fact that always astounds and humbles me, especially after 30 hours of travelling on Boats, Buses, Trains, Planes and Automobiles. The Dogs went mad, they also even recognized me for a change, and it was a great welcome home sunset as well.......Life is good.

Later....