06 January 2013

Victoria I in Helsinki, 6 January 2013

Victoria I

IMO 9281281
Built 2004, Aker Finnyards Rauma, Finland
Tonnage 40 975 GT
Length 193,80 m
Width 29,00 m
Draugth 6,50 m
Ice class 1A Super
2 500 passengers
2 252 berths
400 cars
1 000 lanemeters
4 Wärtsilä diesels, combined 26 240 kW
2 propellers
2 bow thrusters
Speed 22 knots

Contrary to the advertised programming I did have the time today to visit the South Harbour and photographs the Victoria I on her winter cruise visit to the city. As those who follow this blog reguarly perhaps remember, in the Baltic Sea there are two distinct cruise seasons: the self-explanatory summer season and the more unusual winter season around new year, when Russian travel agencies charter local cruiseferries to do longer cruises from St. Petersburg. The logic behind this is the fact that due to the difference between the Julian and Gregorian calendars, Eastern Orthodox countries celebrate Christamas on 7 January. Hence these are in fact Christmas cruises.

One of the ships chartered this year to do Christmas cruises for the Russian market has been Tallink's Victoria I, which did a four-night and a five-night cruise from St. Petersburg. The second of these will terminate in SPB tomorrow, but today the ship was in Helsinki and I had a chance to photograph her.

For a brief history of the Victoria I, see this entry.

Click on the images to see them in larger size.

Winter Victoria.
Backlit by the neat trick of positioning myself so that the sun is behind the funnel. Note that these photos were taken at around 14.00 and yet the sun was already that low.
The ice cover was far from even, thanks to us having "enjoyed" several days of slightly-above-zero weather.
Victoria I and Silja Symphony are usually in Stockholm at the same time, but getting them into the same photo in Helsinki is much rarer.
I admit I did some fidgeting to get the hues in the clouds to stand out better. But in this case the ends justify the means I think.
Next time: In all likelyhood the Silja Festival I already promised in the previous entry.

2 comments:

  1. Hi Kalle.
    Nice shots, thanks for showing.
    But...according to the text under the last photo, You "apologized" that You have edited the photo ?????
    Is it wrong to edit a photo ? As a good photographer You know that neither traditional film-camera or digital-camera can see the world same way as Your eyes can. In a photo, You must do some editing With lights, shadows, colours, cropping etc.
    With editing, You can make even the worst out focused, under exposed etc photo look the most amazing one.

    But that is my opinion and yes,,, I do edit.
    With best regards
    Tero S.

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    Replies
    1. Hello Tero.

      Perhaps a poor choice of words on my part in the final image. All photos I put up here are edited to a smaller or larger degree; usually they are rotated to straighten the horizon, sharpened, brightness & contrast are edited, and colour saturation is increased.

      In that particular image saturation of red & yellow hues was increased even more than usual to get out the hues in the sky, which also made the red stripe in the funnel stand out. So I was not apologising the fact I edited the images as such, but making known the fact that I had done more work than normally. The way I wrote what I did was undoubtedly unclear as I was doing several things at the same time and unfortunately not doing any of them well as a result.

      Delete