The title of today’s shot is a double entendre of sorts. It is sad I only just visited Disneyland and shot Paradise Pier for the first time and it’s already being replaced by Pixar pier. I really enjoyed what I saw and now if I ever make it back it will already be replaced. I am thankful I was able to see this rendition however. I’m really going to have to hustle if I want to get all my MANY unprocessed shots of Paradise Pier out before Pixar Pier opens.
I have wanted to get this shot for quite a while now but never got anything worthwhile. Finally, the sky gave me something interesting to work with and I now have a shareable version of this shot. I really wanted some warmth in the sky to compliment the warm lighting of Harambe’s port. The orange glow from the setting sun did just the trick. Enjoy!
I was waiting on my wife in the restroom area here and noticed monorail red entering the park. I had the Nikon 28 1.4 lens on at the time, so I ran a little way back to frame Spaceship Earth completely and waited for monorail red to glide into frame. It’s a small detail but does a great job of showing the scale of Spaceship Earth. The colors ended up looking fantastic on the blue hour sky too. Enjoy!
In a lot of ways this shot of the Fantasy Faire feels like an older style shot for me. Center up an area and do a long exposure of it. Boom, done. The only slight difference here is I took a few extra photos to get the lights on Rapunzel’s hair on the tower. They illuminate in a swirling effect, so I never got them in one photo. I blended them in but ultimately don’t know that it was worth the time to capture them all as you can’t really tell except on the full resolution version anyway. Regardless, enjoy.
As the sun dipped below the horizon in Pandora the sky took on a nice color gradient. I saturated it a bit and it ended up a fantastic color compliment to the foreground elements. I did a bit of dodge and burn work to the rocks and vines to help them pop a bit better. I find that they tend to look a bit flat in all my Pandora photos unless I do this. Even just a small amount of dodging and burning can go a long way here.
Today I have another shot I felt was decent enough to share from my visit to Sequoia National Park. This was on our way out of the park as the sun was setting. We pulled off on the side of the road and I took this shot. My favorite part about this shot is the color the Sequoia trees take on. The tone and texture are very appealing. Combined with the great forest greens and color wise this is one of my favorite shots I’ve done in quite a while. Enjoy!
Today I’m sharing my first photo from Sequoia National Park. What an amazing National Park. I didn’t get to spend very much time here or explore but it left an impression. The giant Sequoia trees were stunning and I’m glad I’m able to say I experienced them, even for only a couple hours. I’ve been hating on my shots of the park and was hesitating to process and share them. I received a few words of encouragement and decided to move ahead with processing a handful of them. Enjoy.
Last night I was reviewing my Disneyland photos and realized I still have an overwhelming number of photos that deserve processing. This isn’t a bad thing though. I’ve been gravitating towards working on my Disneyland shots over the Walt Disney World ones. The fact that I don’t know when I’ll get to return to Disneyland makes me want to make the best of the photos I do have. Since I visit Walt Disney World regularly when I shoot a photo that I feel could be done better I’ll just ignore it until I can reshoot it. Another chance is usually just a few months away. With that in mind don’t be surprised to see a heavy leaning towards Disneyland for a little while.
I took a similar shot about 2 minutes after this one but framing Spaceship Earth on the left. In fact, both have the same monorail. I’m not sure which I prefer, but now they’re both out in the wild for you to decide. I’m simply thankful the Leave a Legacy monoliths reflect so well, appeasing me when there isn’t a puddle in sight.
I’m always hesitant to start work on another Pandora shot. I know I’m going to want to correct the awful burnt orange sky and I know it’s going to be a painstaking process. I used ‘select color range’ to make a rough selection of the sky. Cleaning up around all the vine and tree edges Pandora presents is a lesson in patience. As for the alignment of the moon in this photo, I wish I could say it was planned but I lucked out with my timing. I also took a shot of 15 seconds at ISO 400 which captured a good number of stars. I used that shot along with a single 30 second base exposure to create my final image.