Last week's trip to Disney I decided to take a different approach to the photography - after having just taken 500+ photos during Mousefest of all the rides, parks, landscapes, nightshots, and characters, I thought this trip should be much more spare. So I looked for the odd or random scenes or shots that caught my eye, and tried to capture them as I saw them in my mind's eye. Feel free to critique or comment - I was out having fun and trying something a bit different. Sitting in the France pavilion, behind the Guerlain store, the light hitting the pink trees by the bridge to England caught my attention...a good bit of zoom required; I tried to capture more the textures than the 'landscape' elements of the scene: Also while there, this lovely French girl in costume walked out of the store on her way to a break...I had the camera down by the ground playing around with perspective with the leaves, and decided to snap when she entered frame: Here, I couldn't resist the opportunity to photograph the pretty Chinese woman standing in the China exhibit. This was taken from the Chinese garden: This was an interesting post-processing challenge - I had taken a picture just before this one metered on the sunset of the Stave Church silhouette. When the Norwegian girl turned and looked towards me, I mockingly pointed the camera in the air towards her and pretended to snap the shutter, then gave her the 'ooh la la' OK sign - all in jest. She smiled, and I left. However, in my mock shot, I had actually snapped the shutter, metered off the sunset behind (since I wasn't really aiming). The result was a silhouette shot of all foreground elements, badly crooked horizon, and no girl...a throwaway shot. But when I got home, the challenge bug hit me, and I wanted to see exactly how much could be recovered from the shot (with RAW, this would have been easy...but with JPEG, NOT!). I ran it through Helicon noiseware, rotated the shot to level and cropped, created a duplicate layer in screen mode, then duplicated the screen layer 5 more times. I erased the sky out of 4 of the duplicate layers to restore color to it, then merged all layers, boosted contrast, and resaturated. I know it's not a great shot - but there is something off and surreal about the look that was kind of interesting to me, and it was fun just to try to get a shot out of nothing! I was very surprised how much detail was lurking in the shadows: And finally, just some fall colored leaves against a clean sky, noticed while having a daquiri near Morocco:
I like the approach.. I don't know what to call this.. I want to say a focus on artistic elements, but.. This is what I am SO bad at. I've developed a decent ability to shoot animals in a roughly portrait style, that's perhaps my strongest area. And I find some other decent stuff in WDW.. but I don't see the things that you posted. I'm still so locked in the typical approach.. I always do the same things. Castle with fireworks, animals at Animal Kingdom, night shots at Epcot of my favorite buildings including Spaceship Earth.. Attempts at dramatic structure pictures.. The photo tour with Tim helped show me a few new things, and hopefully I can expand upon that in future trips.. but.. yes.. keep doing this. Show me how much more there is to do than what I'm doing so far. I can't even ID where the first picture you posted was taken. I mean I know because you said so, but the picture in itself is kind of cryptic about exactly where it's from, you used the elements of the scene to compose a new image instead of what we all see when we're there. And I like the story of the force of will required to bring the Norway accidental shot to what we're seeing now.
Thank you Joe...very kind. Dan, I have over 30 folders of digital photos separated by Disney trip, with hundreds and hundreds of photos in each...and they are often much like yours. I always shoot the castle, animals, nigth shots, etc. And even this time, I couldn't resist a few. I think the only reason I had the freedom to try more esoteric shots this time was that I was just there last month with Mousefest, and had shot well over 500 photos of all of those 'classic' scenes and animals. I KNEW I didn't need another gorilla shot, meercat shot, bird shot, castle shot, etc. So I concentrated on two things - filling in the gaps of stuff I didn't get last time (hippos, aardvark), and otherwise just roam around looking for odd things or odd angles, closeups, details...or just different framing than usual. Some of it was a failure, and some was interesting...but it was all fun. And in 5 days, I only took 170 photos (time with family and friends too!). I still got a few more Epcot night shots, and Spaceship Earth, and Everest over the lake...couldn't resist snapping a few classics! Oh...and that Norwegian girl photo? Here's the original, just resized, to give you an idea what I had to work with: I'm surprised at how much can be pulled out of a photo that is trash! The end result won't win any awards, but maybe that was a once-in-a-lifetime moment that you blew...nice to know with some work, you might be able to get something salvageable out of it! Thanks for the comments.
The other pics you posted are great. I really like the way this one ended up. Excellent work. Well done!!!
i find that the details are what make the disney parks. where else can you find mundane items that are so beautiful in context?
Uhhh no where???? Exception: Legoland (but c'mon...how many people actually go from DL down an hour or so to go to Legoland????) That's what makes the Disney Parks so fun to photograph... When I get around to it, I'll get my Six Flags America pix up from their pseudo-grand opening! Yeah, would you rather ride Rock N Roller Coaster or one that is in the middle of nowhere with no theming, other than a name and colored tracks? Or a pirate ride next to said coaster.
Much agreed Tim...Disney is magical for the attention to detail, the meticulous presentation, the employee training, and the cleanliness...all of which are in addendum to the rides and attractions. I haven't known of or been to a place that can hold a candle to it - Six Flags Magic Mountain, Knott's Berry Farm, San Diego Zoo, Great Adventure, Busch Gardens Virginia (Old World), Busch Gardens Tampa, Sea World Orlando, Universal L.A., or Universal Orlando. Each may have something - faster rides, more roller coasters, more animals, etc...but none can do the Disney details!
Thanks. I was surprised at how much info was still hidden in there! With RAW, you can routinely recover this much shadow detail, but with JPEG it's more rare. Fortunately, my camera seems to have a pretty decent dynamic range for a small sensor ultrazoom, and left plenty of shadow detail.
