While not readily apparent this shot of the Germany Pavilion was taken after a really great downpour. There is a little bit of shine on some of the cobblestone and more on the edge of the fountain but even more than just adding a bit of shine I like that it really makes everything look nice and clean. Disney in general is pretty clean but even after hours there can still be bits of debris all around that can be distracting in a photo. I often spend a lot of time cloning out major stuff but you still can wind up with a lot of tiny spots and specks that aren’t very nice. Having all this cleaned up from the rain is a huge bonus. I’ll admit too I’m not very create with my Germany pavilion shots. Mostly I’ve just taken shots over the years from various angles around the fountain and this is yet another angle I tried out just to make it be a little different from my previous shots. Ultimately they are all very similar but I still enjoy shooting it and it’s usually a quick and easy shot with few if no people hanging around after hours.
This was shot with the Nikon D810 and Nikon 14-24 2.8 as a 5 bracket exposure. I chose to blend this shot manually instead of using photomatix. I used my brightest exposure for my base and then blended in 2 more exposures with luminosity masks to tame the highlights. I ended up doing very little post processing beyond that with some mild color balancing, saturation adjustments and throwing in a bit of Nik Color Efex Pro Contrast. This is a filter I like to use from time to time as the dynamic contrast option can do a great job of adding some pop to the photo when needed.
