Is that the picture, or just another way to make a profit?

You have just spent 9 hours on a plane or travelled for 4 hours by road to Southampton and are in a long queue to embark on the cruise of your dreams, and you turn what you think is the last corner and you meet the Ships Photographer! With a cheesy grin they thrust a lifebuoy in your hand and shout smile!!

Now don't think that is the last you will see of the photographer, no round every corner you turn they will lurk! On formal nights they will be there catching everybody in their finery, with a formal shot on the stairs or a lounge. When you get off at port they will be there again with the lifebuoy, but named with the port so you know where you are!

If you are really lucky, a photographer may be with you on your tour - or in my case with the video camera. I am now the proud owner of a DVD of my cruise, only because of my brief appearance in 1 of the sections!

Then you go and spend hours in the photo gallery, glasses on straining at the thousands of (samey) photos of people on the cruise, have you tried to find your picture when everybody is wearing a dinner jacket and black tie!

Once you have found them, and there will be many you start adding up the costs. At $24.99 per picture on Cunard it could be very expensive, although if you bought 6 you only paid $124.95! There were signs saying no cameras allowed, but I did see a couple of people taking snaps of the snaps, don't know how successful that would be.

But technology moves on, I have just read that on NCL Epic they are going to have a Youfinder® Facial Recognition System. Which means that they will software to recognise facial features from your embarkation photo so its easier to find your cruise pictures. So you can choose which prints you want, or you may want a picture CD of them all!

As I have not yet been on the Epic, still got a couple of months or so to wait, I'm not sure what the cost will be but I can't imagine they will be cheap.


Is this a move to more advanced technology, or to improve the overall profit margin of the photo gallery as they won't be printing thousands of photo prints that people don't want to buy. It has to be profit, I have to say the last pictures I printed, at Tesco, were only 10p for a 5x7 print, yet the cruise lines are charging upwards of $25 a time!