Floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, thousands of miles from the nearest land is a unique and poignant experience. Looking at the endless horizon, you would feel completely lost if not for the absolute faith you place in the ship's captain and his crew, knowing they make this crossing every year. At night time, under cloud cover, the horizon disappears entirely and all you can see is the white wake of the ship extending out and fading to darkness. You know the water is still there because of the rocking and constant vibration of great forces working below you, but otherwise you could very well be in deep space, far far away from any other point of light.
This all started what feels like months ago, but in reality it has been only just over 3 weeks since we stood on the shore in San Diego, looking westward over a watery horizon just as visually anonymous as those that surround us on all sides now.
In California we all met in a rented house a couple blocks from the beach. It felt like we were contestants on a reality show, many of us meeting each other for the first time (or at last in the flesh after extensive email communiques). My passport, with its final Ghana visa, had arrived at my parents' house only an hour after I had left for the airport in Denver, and thanks to an expeditious effort on their part, was in my hand on Saturday morning. In San Diego we ate breakfast on the beach, took long walks to pharmacies and hardware stores for last minute supplies, and enjoyed each others company in the evenings by drinking home brew beer, playing games, and sampling the vacation home's middling DVD collection ('Beaches' was a favourite, viewed on a stubbornly magenta monstrous old CRT in the basement).
A trip to Pacific Beach warranted some slow motion tests on Mark's new FS700 and netted some good shots of the crew.
Boarding the ship was a surprisingly calm affair. Because the students weren't joining us until Ensenada, the faculty, staff, and Unreasonable folks had plenty of time meet each other and get settled and oriented on board the MV Explorer, our home for the next four months.
As the engines started up during the first nightly Unreasonable 'Town Hall' meeting, I rushed outside with my camera to shoot a timelapse of the ship as it pulled away from the harbour. The feeling as we separated from the shore and the true 'sea' part of the sea voyage finally began was overwhelming and electric. There was no turning back now – we had all made it on to this ship and it was really happening.
Almost immediately the ship started rocking and I think we all felt a bit of panic at the amount of movement that we were experiencing just out of port. That initial night was an interesting one – many people found the rocking to be very relaxing while in bed, myself included. Being up and about during the day was a bit of a different story however. Thankfully, I had come prepared with a full arsenal of varied sea-sickness remedies, including Sea Bands (wrist pressure point things), ginger gum, and some Walgreens variety of non-drowsy Dramamine. How many of these acted as placebos and how much my eventual recovery and acquisition of my sea legs was due to simple conditioning is hard to say. Suffice it to say that what we felt first leaving port has become entirely common place and even as we start to head into rougher waters on our way to Japan I'm feeling pretty confident in my constitution going forward.
Waking up the next morning to shoot the sunrise, I discovered we had been magically transported to Mexico overnight. It was a beautiful experience to see the light come up from darkness over the harbour and hills of Ensenada. When I first came up on deck there was even a sliver of moon right at the point on the horizon where the sun was about to rise.
We completed faculty and staff orientation and adventured into town with a contingent of Unreasonables and a few Semester At Sea veterans who knew the best place to eat: a great (Mexican, of course) seafood restaurant. We showed up all 20 something of us off the street with no reservations. It proved to be no problem though and we were promptly seated in a big tent outdoors strung with lights and pre-populated by a mariachi band happy to take American dollars for tips. We shared pitchers of margaritas and my mixed seafood ceviche was incredible. A found letter full of lascivious entreaties from the previous inhabitant of Laura's cabin provided entertainment and some embarrassed reactions as it got passed around the table.
The next morning saw the students' embarkation. It was a hectic day as we tried to get as much coverage of the event as possible and I shot my first official photos for Semester At Sea for use on their blog. The presence of the students really brought the ship to life and made it feel very much like a 'floating campus' as it is often described.
Once we were underway from Ensenada the real work of documenting the Unreasonable program began in ernest.
We are blessed to have The Archbishop Desmond Tutu on board, who is a long time friend of Semester At Sea, having sailed several times before. He will be with us until Cape Town, and I was lucky to catch an intimate moment between His Grace and Tendakayi, an Unreasonable founder from Botswana hoping to expand the market for his solar-powered hearing aid product. He and the Arch sat and chatted about his business and the history and politics of Africa as they shared a banana. It was a surreal experience to behold my capacity as a professional photographer shooting a man who has been photographed so many times by photographers much more talented and experienced than I.
Documenting Unreasonable At Sea has been an excellent exercise in photographic storytelling for me already. Everyone on this vessel has an incredible background story and the program is truly a fascinating experiment in bringing all these remarkable people together. The best part is that since we are all stuck with each other on this ship, we are all becoming close friends.
Many events take place in the union, the largest classroom space on the Explorer. The Global Entrepreneurship class taught by Daniel and George takes place there, as well as the nightly 'Fireside Chats' in which mentors, learning partners, and founders give interviews and personal insights about their businesses and lives. The union is a great place to shoot in – the lighting and features of the room make it very photogenic, but also rather challenging as it is so dim. It definitely makes me appreciate the fast lenses I've invested in and I'm happy to be able to continue shooting using only natural light.
The experience up to this point has been incredible enough – I would have be content to simply stay on the Explorer as she sailed the ocean, interacting with all the excellent minds and personalities present. But of course the best part of this voyage is that it is taking us to 14 ports around the world, the first of which was Hawaii. I had discounted it perhaps because it seemed relatively unremarkable compared to the other foreign ports, but our experience there was nothing short of spectacular. Those stories and images will have to wait for another post however, coming before we port in Japan in 5 days time.