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.
I was very fortunate on my trip to Disneyland to get a mix of different skies. I was told the skies would be cloudy like this one, but I experienced clear skies, mixed skies, and cloudy skies. This included some interesting sunsets as well. As for this sky, I like the texture this sky presented, and it’s a cool compliment to Carthay Circle restaurant. I made a rare crop on this photo as I felt I shot it too wide and the composition was hurting because of it. Still, one lucky photographer on the far right has been forever immortalized in my photo.
For whatever reason I’ve never done this shot that shows off the entire end scene to Splash Mountain. I probably thought the ones I shot previously weren’t good enough, but this one from our trip in March makes the cut. My new dark ride slayer, the Nikon 28 1.4, continues to blow me away with the images I capture with it. The rendering is absolutely impeccable, and I find the focal length is perfect for Disney dark rides. Having shot both the Nikon 24 1.4 and Nikon 35 1.4 in the past (along with some Sigma variants) I often found 24 to be slightly too wide and 35 too tight for the scene. The 28mm focal length seems to hit the spot time and time again. Highly, highly recommended.
This simple shot of the Enchanted Tiki Room and Adventureland was somewhat painful to shoot. I was doing 3 shot brackets and had 6 in a row of kids running through the scene with the multi-color laser swords. In all I took twelve total shots and used three; two for masking and one for highlight control. Lately, I’ve been utilizing the Adobe Landscape color mode as a starting point for my photos. This color profile gets me much closer to what I’m going for with my images, so I end up having to do less massaging to get to my final image. Hooray for evolving technology…
I only spent a couple hours total shooting in Cars Land during my one and only Disneyland trip, but I could see myself spending days shooting just this land. There’s so many details and so many possibilities for shots it’s truly overwhelming. With that in mind I opted to get what I felt were staple type shots. This Route 66 sign composition utilizes 3 shots. 2 for blending an additional shot to eliminate people in the frame. I spaced them out a few minutes and fortunately even with the park open was able to get this empty park shot with only 2 shots for masking!
I’ve gotten bored of the straight on shot here so I opted to mix it up with a side shot. Additionally, I used my Rokinon 12mm fisheye and got low, shooting at a slight upwards angle. As a bonus I captured the monorail on the far rail which really helps round out the shot. Enjoy.