Occasionally, you simply luck into a unique shot. I was shooting this due to the unique lighting scheme on and around Cinderella Castle when suddenly… fireworks. Now we’re in business. A second round of fireworks was shot a few minutes later but funny enough my best capture was the one that was caught by surprise.
The clouds in this shot were not moving quickly like the ones from yesterday’s shot. This made them much clumpier and uglier as I mentioned. Even a 30 second exposure only gave them a little bit of motion, so I spent a little bit of extra time using color and curves to add some additional mood to the sky. This ended up giving me my moodiest edit of the Imagination Pavilion yet.
Usually I prefer completely clear night skies to capture. Cloudy skies often turn into an ugly mess but on this night the clouds were moving extremely quick which I knew could end up making something interesting. I took a few longer exposures and ended up really digging how cool the sky on the right-hand side looked and how it broke up nicely into some clearer sky for some stars. This really makes the image in my mind and gives it an added layer a clear sky simply would not have provided.
An immediate reaction to this shot may be why is the tip of the Imagination building cut off. The answer to that is because immediately just out of frame is the monorail beam. With that in mind I really liked this angle shooting the imagination building with these multi-colored flowers in the foreground and ultimately framed it so the cut off feels intentional and not awkward. Whether or not I succeeded us up for debate, but I wanted to share it anyway.
Skies play a big role in my decision to shoot or not shoot a scene. Having shot around Walt Disney World so much now I have multiples of many of the more common scenes such as this one. With that in mind if I walk by and the sky isn’t offering something interesting, I’ll completely skip shooting it. This time however some nice pink color in the clouds offered something unique and different.
Sorry to everyone who follows me exclusively for Disney photos… I’ve got at least a few more Smoky Mountain photos first! This is one of the many stream photos I took on my latest visit. I love shooting various spots on the streams throughout the park as they all offer something unique and interesting. This shot also gave me a chance to test out the Z7 weather sealing as the rain was coming down steadily by the time I was setup for this shot. I’m glad to say it held up without any issue.
I took this shot twice in the same day. I took one version earlier in the day, but I didn’t love the lighting. Coming back through the park after sunset I decided to stop again and take this shot as the moon was starting to rise. This worked out much better and I was able to capture the mood I was looking for. Also, that smiley face in the water is super creepy……
I finally had a chance to take my new Nikon Z7 out and do some shooting with it and my overall impressions are quite good. More on that later however as I am working on a full write up of my thoughts and experiences with the camera for a later date. This shot was taken from the parking lot for Clingman’s Dome. It was becoming cloudy very quickly so my hope of shooting the Milky Way later this night was busted but I decided to not let the drive up be completely wasted and took a couple shots and ended up really liking how the sky turned out.
I’ve been getting requests to do some more instructional videos so I’m back with another one. In this one I take you through my entire process for editing Sleeping Beauty Castle. Its all applicable to other processing though. Looking forward to feedback and what yall would like to see next.