As our own tiny expedition ship, holding just 22 passengers, moved through the Inside Passage’s Icy Strait, I made this image of a huge Princess ocean liner sailing away from us in the far distance, dwarfed by the scale of the landscape surrounding it. The vast mountain range overwhelms the cruise ship, making it seem vulnerable to nature’s whims in spite of its vast size. It is one of the many cruise ships that ply the Inside Passage each summer. Cruise ships usually anchor in a different port each night, and carry extensive tourism to Southeast Alaskan towns such as Juneau, Ketchikan and Skagway. More than one million cruise passengers were expected to sail on the Inside Passage during 2013. Several thousand of them were on the ship we see in the distance.