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How Cunard nailed the jaw-dropping Queen Mary 2 photo shoot at sea

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Can you measure the size of a ship by its captain? Cunard Line pulled off a spectacular photo shoot of Capt. Kevin Oprey posed in front of his ship, the Queen Mary 2, while balanced on the vessel’s underwater bow. The recent photos, in which the captain appears in uniform as a tiny dot in front of the behemoth ship, were snapped to mark a decade at sea for the ocean liner in 2014.

“It’s the incredible majesty of that ship, it’s a towering, beautiful ocean liner,” photographer James D. Morgan said in a statement from the luxury cruise line. “What I wanted to achieve was to create the difference between the man that controls it and the actual structure.”

Osprey posed on what’s called the bulbous bow, a part of the ship jutting out in front of the prow just under the waterline that minimizes waves. He and the ship were about a mile off the coast of the Indonesian island of Bali while in the midst of a round-the-world cruise.

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Two safety craft stood at the ready nearby, but Oprey appears completely alone at sea with the ship he commands. It took five hours to wait for optimal conditions for the captain to make his stand, the Cunard statement says. Oprey recounts the experience in a behind-the-scenes video.

So how big is the QM2? It weighs 151,200 tons and holds 2,620 passengers and a crew of 1,253. Since its maiden voyage in 2004, it has called at 182 ports in 60 countries.

The ship completes its journey in Southampton, England, on May 9 in time to mark its 10th anniversary. Sister ships Queen Elizabeth and Queen Victoria will be in place for the celebrations.

mary.forgione@latimes.com

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