The Tale of Four Pictures that became One

Story written by Rick Archer
March 2011

I have now used the "dance cruise" picture to promote five consecutive cruises.  In addition to 2007, I have since used this picture as the permanent logo for the yearly dance cruises organized by Marla and myself in 2008, 2009, and 2010. 

As you can see, my dance cruise picture has returned this year to help promote our 2011 Labor Day Conquest Dance Cruise. 

Reprint from the May 2007 SSQQ Newsletter

100 People going as of April 26!

Well, everybody, get ready.  The Sea You in September Dance Party is on.

The Alpha Hussy is back, the Center of Attention is ready to cause more trouble, Mr. Handsome is back, and of course the Jammer - Gary Richardson - is back to take more incriminating pictures plus spin the DJ music. 

Something incredible happened on Monday, April 24 - Everybody decided to sign up at once!  Marla signed up 33 people in the space of four days.  

So how did this veritable Biblical flood of registrations begin?

Sunday night at the studio, six people handed Marla their cruise registrations in person:  Phyllis Porter (Center of Attention),  Judy Walsh, Viola Hernandez, Ken Robeson, Vicky Jimenez, and Meg Hada.  Marla was impressed.  Six in one day!  Not bad.   Two other people - Lin Mills and Rick Elizondo - came up to Marla and verbally committed as well.  

After the big rush on Sunday evening, Monday morning things were pretty quiet.  Marla was sort of disappointed because she thought the previous night was the start of something big.  Nope.  Not one new registration the entire morning or afternoon.

On Monday night at the studio, Doug Ferris and Vivian Gustafson both handed Marla their registrations.  That made 10 new registrations in two days.  

On Tuesday morning, the dam broke.  As Marla walked in her office at 10 am, there was some sort of groaning and moaning coming from the fax machine.  Marla went over to take a look.  Holy Cow!   The poor machine was jammed with paper.  As Marla untangled the mess, she realized there were seven cruise registrations.   Julie Johnson, Marian Patterson, Charlie Denton, Joan Recht, Sandy Upchurch, Sandra Palmer, and Karen Wisniewski had all sent in registrations. 

Marla was sitting at her desk trying to process their reservations, her phone rang.  Joe Lachner called to say he and Patty Harrison were back for the third year in a row.  Now we were up to 19 registrations in three days.

On Wednesday, the registrations came in fast and furious.   Some came by email, some came by fax, some came by phone, but every minute Marla turned around it was someone else.  Mickie Benoit, John Safos, Nancy Neuhaus, Terri Beeler, Jeff Margolis,  Conor O'Muirgheasa, Cristina Lozano, Gary and Betty Richardson, Marlanea Taylor plus Alpha Hussy Leslie Goldsmith.  Plus three more people handed in their registrations at the studio in the evening (but as I write, they aren't confirmed).  Assuming the Mysterious Three go, that's fourteen registrations in one day.  Or 33 people in four days.  Amazing.
 

Four Pictures Become One

If you study the pictures above, you will see my "dance cruise" picture is the product of four images drawn from the separate pictures and then merged into one. 

Although I am sure an expert could do it much faster, it took me three hours of research to find the right pictures and then six hours of work spread over two afternoons to come up with the finished product. 

Incidentally, I didn't get those four pictures off the Internet.  I once subscribed to a graphic art service.  I paid money for the legal right to use the original four pictures.   In other words, those pictures are "royalty-free" clip art that belong to me. 

I used the cruise picture on the left as my background.

Long-time SSQQ-Bissonnet patrons might recognize a familiar style in this picture of the older couple on the cruise ship.

That lovely picture plus the "Titanic" picture on the right is the work of Frank Fruzyna, the genius whose black and white artwork decorated my studio on Bissonnet for many years.

I admire Mr. Fruzyna's work so much.  I feel fortunate that he shared his talent with the world through the graphics service I subscribed to.  More about that in a moment.

I will be the first to admit I am not much of an artist myself.  About the only the artistic thing I contributed to the end product was to make the sky black and add the moon.  I also colored the girl's hair red so their hair would show up better against the black sky. 

Putting the merged picture together was a lot of work, but it was a fun project. I was very proud of myself when I finished.

LOGO

Now it is true that my "dance cruise" picture isn't trademarked, but I believe I have every right to tell people that my "dance cruise" picture is my personal property.  After all, I created the picture specifically to help promote my travel business.

Over the past five years, I have secretly hoped that my "dance cruise" picture would become linked in the back of the minds of our cruise customers.  Theoretically, whenever they would see that distinctive picture, they would immediately recognize it as the symbol of our travel business.  Isn't that how logos and advertising is supposed to work?

Interestingly, when I recently showed that picture to a group of lawyers, the first thing they did was smile and comment on how cute the picture was.  After complimenting me on a job well done, they scolded me for not trade-marking the picture like I should have. 

I frowned and said I didn't realize that was something I needed to do.  I assumed everyone knew that picture was linked to my cruise business.

As a bit of background to this story, Marla and I began our relationship on a cruise trip.  Marla and I originally connected on SSQQ Dance Studio's second cruise back in 2001.  We began the trip as strangers and instantly fell deeply in love.  We have never been apart since. 

In fact, we not only met on a cruise ship, we also got married on one.  As our relationship developed, we both agreed that things should come full circle. So in 2004, we were married aboard a cruise ship in a crazy, mixed up ceremony known as the Oops Wedding where I was an hour late to my own wedding! 

Marla is the person who taught me the pleasure of travel and seeing the world.  As we celebrate our tenth year together, our time has always been wrapped around cruise trips.  This started right at the beginning.  As I got to know Marla, I learned that Marla had a deep love of travel.  Not only did she love to travel, she had a tremendous amount of knowledge.

At the time, I had never traveled in my life, but now Marla had me curious. Wouldn't it be fun to see the world in our retirement years?

Unfortunately, I didn't think my nest egg was sufficient to cover several expensive cruise trips a year. 

A lot of people assume that all those huge crowds of people that used to visit SSQQ-Bissonnet translated into massive amounts of money.  While it is true that the studio was prosperous at the turn of the Millennium, once the medical people took over the Bissonnet Shopping Center and cut back on our parking, profits became a thing of the past for most of the 2000s.  The last few years were a serious struggle for me. In fact, I was so bitter at the way my business was treated, I decided I never wanted to run a dance studio again. They were pretty rough on me.

Faced with my financial limitations, I had an idea.  Why not use Marla's travel and business skills to organize cruise trips and use my own writing skills to help promote each trip?   In this way, once I retired, we could continue to be able to afford to travel plus we would have the added benefit of sharing the adventures with our friends!

That was the motivation behind setting up our side business as travel hosts during the final years of SSQQ-Bissonnet.

When it came time for me to retire from the dance studio business in 2010, Marla and I decided we would switch from teaching dance to focus on offering cruise trips through our business, SSQQ Travel.

We were amazingly successful last year (2010).  We took 40 people to Oslo and Northern Europe in May and 190 people on a cruise to the Bahamas over Labor Day in 2010.  That was easily quite a record.  In addition, our cruise trip to the Virgin Islands and the Eastern Caribbean in May 2011 has over 70 people.

Talk about a good idea!  That was ten years ago. In that time, we have organized 20 cruises for over 2,000 passengers.  We have seen Spain, Norway, Scotland, Ireland, England, France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Hawaii, Alaska, the Bahamas, New England, Canada, most of the Caribbean plus a cruise to Mardi Gras, the wildest event in America.  It has been quite an experience hanging with Marla!

In early February 2011, I noticed her latest effort.  Curious, I went to her website.  That is when I discovered that Tammey had chosen to use my "dance cruise" as her logo for her trip.

At the exact same time, my "dance cruise" picture was also front and center on the SSQQ Travel home page. 

I was confused.

How was Tammey able to overlook the fact that she was using the same picture that was my LOGO for the 2011 Labor Dance Cruise?

I checked: there were over 45 million pictures listed under "dance cruise".  Surely that was the problem.  Now Tammey's difficulty in identifying the SSQQ connection made perfect sense. 

When someone does a general search on thousands and millions of dance cruise images, I could certainly understand how the small print makes it difficult to notice where the picture originated from.  Just because my picture was the third picture on the entire Internet didn't necessarily make it easy for Tammey to identify its origin. 

By the way, if you are curious to see where my "dance cruise" picture is located on Google, just type in "dance cruise", then click on "images".  Shouldn't be hard to find.  Recently it became the Number One picture.