Miami Florida.

In April 2019, we sailed on the Norwegian Star from Los Angeles to Miami via the Panama Canal. We arrived in Miami early in the morning and as an early riser, I was up and walking around the promenade deck being thankful that we concluded another 14 nights at sea and being disappointed that in a couple of hours, we would be headed to the airport for our flights home.

As I looked out over the channel toward the city of Miami, a large cruise ship, the Celebrity Equinox, was returning to port after a week-long cruise in the Eastern Caribbean. The ship was actually on one of its last cruises prior to drydock for a complete renovation in June 2019. The ship had the honor of being captained by the first female American mega-cruise ship captain, Kate McCue (though it was not her first cruise ship assignment for Celebrity.) Kate captained the Celebrity Equinox until August 2019 and is currently the captain of the brand new Celebrity Edge.

About the photo: A few weeks ago, I was searching for some photos for a photo challenge called “It’s All About the Light.” I hadn’t yet processed this image, captured that early morning with my Samsung S7. What struck me was how the low-hanging clouds were lit by the city lights and the ship created its own “light show” by simply parading by in the early morning hours.

I loaded the image into Adobe Lightroom for basic processing, then on to Luminar AI which did a beautiful job of enhancing those clouds and giving the cruise ship an almost ethereal glow. I’ve posted the image in my Flickr folder to allow you a better view of the image. Simply click on the image to see it in HD on my Flickr account.

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never have a specific topic for this feature, and the only rules are that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or another mobile device… If you have an image from a drone, that’s acceptable as well. The second rule is to link your challenge-response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post in the comment.

John Steiner

Miami, Florida.

In April 2019, we spent two weeks on our second Panama Canal cruise. Our first, in 2013, was to be that once-in-a-lifetime event that we would share in conversation with family and friends. Be careful when you do that, or you’ll be experiencing it again with family or friends who want the experience themselves and want you to accompany them.

It wasn’t much arm-twisting to get us to go along for the trip. It’s always more fun when you can share an experience with others. Besides, it gave us the opportunity to sail in the opposite direction, from California to Florida instead of the other way we sailed on our first trip. We also saw a couple of different countries and had the chance to try other excursions than on our first trip.

About the photo: A couple of months ago, I was reviewing photos for the weekly Lens-Artists Photo Challenge and I came upon a cellphone photo that I’d captured on my Samsung Galaxy 7 but had forgotten to write up a Cellpic Sunday post for it. On the last day of our cruise, we were sitting in port on departure day. I was up early as usual and out on the promenade deck when the Celebrity Equinox sailed by on its way to discharge passengers and pick up new ones.

While the image doesn’t make it appear that the ship is very close, it was too close to fit in a single cellphone image. I snapped two images, one of the front half, one of the back half, and then used the Panorama function in Adobe Lightroom to stitch them together. After a few tweaks, I moved the image to Luminar 3 for final processing. Be sure to click on the image to enlarge it for a better view if your browser supports the function.

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never have a specific topic for this feature, and the only rules are that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or another mobile device… If you have an image from a drone, that’s acceptable as well. The second rule is to link your challenge-response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post in the comment.

John Steiner

It was morning on disembarkation day at Miami. As usual, I was up early. The Norwegian Star, fresh from her voyage through the Panama Canal sat in port. Inside, the ship was already bustling with people getting ready to return to their daily lives after a 14-day vacation. The ship’s main deck atrium was already full with people sitting around awaiting their turn to depart, yet it was early enough that the ship hadn’t yet even cleared Customs.

I was standing on the Promenade Deck looking at the buildings across the channel from the cruise ship dock when another cruise ship proceeded into port. Looking online, I wasn’t able to determine where she was coming from for this post, but I did learn that by the end of the day this photo was taken, the Equinox would begin a Southern Caribbean 7-day itinerary.

About the photo:

I didn’t have my Nikon with me so I pulled my Samsung S7 cellphone out and captured a few images as the ship passed by. This image is my favorite as it happened to capture some of the Miami shoreline. I exported the image into Aurora 2019 for basic processing. I am always amazed at the detail captured by today’s modern digital image sensors. Tools like Aurora do a great job of pulling out those details that don’t show up well with the camera’s basic processing tools. In most browsers, you can click on the image to enlarge it for a better view of those details.

John Steiner