This is the travel blog of a ship’s videographer. My name is Jan Madeus, I have worked on cruise ships since 2008, and I go ashore in the same ports as the passengers, with the same few hours and the same deadline to be back on board. What I have learned in those hours is what this site is for: how to do a port on your own, what it costs, what fits and what does not — and where the photographs are.
I am also a photographer. Everything here is photographed on the day, by me, and the pictures matter to me as much as the timetables. If you are looking for a fjord in the right light rather than a list of attractions, that is the same thing from the other side.
Eighteen years at sea
Since 2008 I have worked as a videographer on cruise ships, most recently aboard MS Amadea. The routes took me through the Baltic and the North Sea, along the Norwegian coast to Svalbard and Greenland, around the Mediterranean and through Suez, across the Atlantic to the Caribbean and both Americas, down to the Falklands and South Georgia, and on through the Middle East, India, Southeast Asia, China, Australia and the Pacific.
A ship’s videographer goes ashore in nearly every port, usually for a few hours, always with a camera and a time to be back. That is the perspective behind the “cruise port on your own” guides here — not a week in a place, but the same half-day the passenger has, repeated over many years.
Who this site is for
For anyone who has a few hours in a port and would rather spend them their own way than on a coach. The cruise port guides each answer the same questions: where the ship ties up, what you can reach on foot or by public transport, what the independent version costs against the ship’s excursion, how much buffer to keep before all-aboard, and which stop is worth the detour with a camera. Prices and timetables are checked at the time of writing and dated, because they change.
There is no sponsored content here and nothing is booked through me. Where I think a ship’s excursion is the better choice — a winter call at the North Cape, for instance — the article says so.
What I write about here
The places I know best are the ones I’ve come back to most: Norway and the Arctic, Iceland, Scotland and its islands, the Azores, Greenland. Those are the regions this site covers. The rest of the map I know from fewer visits and keep for later.
Training and tools
I have photographed since I was fourteen. From 1980 to 1986 I studied painting and graphic art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków — composition and light I learned there, before I learned them through a viewfinder. I’ve lived in Berlin since 1989. I’ve worked with Sony cameras since 2001, currently an Alpha 7R V with a small set of lenses. Every photograph on this site is my own.
Names
I was born in Poland as Krzysztof Jarzębinski. Jan is my second given name; Madeus is a name I made up because the original was hard to pronounce west of the Oder. Both belong to the same person. I work in German, Polish and English.
Contact
Questions about a port, a picture or a licence: info@madeus.org. Photographs and short notes between articles: Instagram @janmadeus. Architecture photography and fine-art prints live on janmadeus.net and janmadeus.com.