Disney

Sunrise Partners

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Monocast

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Hidden Temple of Heaven 2021 Update

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Disney

Yesterday a Planet, Tomorrow Just a Dog 2021 Update

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Poutine Sunset

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This Way to Splash Mountain Stars

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Tutorial

New Photo Editing Video Series

by Matthew Cooper
written by Matthew Cooper

I’m finally pleased to announce the release of the 1st episode in my new video series. In this first episode we have critiques on some of the submissions, a full length edit in Photoshop and an in depth advanced Photoshop technique segment. The first episode runs almost 1 1/2 hours and has been split in to 2 parts. In part 1 we take a look and critique some of the photos submitted as well as do a full length edit in Photoshop. In part 2 we dive into some advanced Photoshop techniques including straightening and removal of unwanted elements. As this is the first episode I’d especially love to hear all of your thoughts and comments so we can fine tune and improve the episodes as we go along.

Also please keep sending those submissions into [email protected] as this is going to be a weekly video series and I’ll need a constant stream of photos from all of you to make this work. And of course, just because you don’t see your photo on an episode this week doesn’t mean it won’t be in a future episode.

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A Magical Kingdom
Disney

A Magical Kingdom

by Matthew Cooper
written by Matthew Cooper

This was one of my favorite images from this past trip and I wanted to save it for something special, and this 500th image post seemed like just the thing. This was taken shortly before I rushed over and took the Splash Mountain photo I posted a few days back. The sunset was absolutely killer and gave me these wonderful colors to work with. I hope everyone has a great weekend and don’t forget to enter the print give-away contest!

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Site News

Preset Sale

by Matthew Cooper
written by Matthew Cooper

My Disney Lightroom preset pack is back on sale for $5.00. You can purchase it by clicking the shop link at the top. Also for those of you waiting on the new presets pack, they ARE still coming. Real life has just been so busy I haven’t had time to properly work on and finish them. I really hope to have the first new set ready within a week.

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DisneyLightroom

Disney World Lightroom Presets On Sale!

by Matthew Cooper
written by Matthew Cooper

Everyone, I am pleased to announce the release of my first set of
Lightroom Presets designed specifically with the purpose of making your
Disney World shots shine. In this first set, the presets focus on day
time shots with blue skies and night time shots.  There are 3 presets
for day and 3 presets for night each with a varying degree of contrast
and adjustment curve. As this is my first set, it will be offered thru
the end of July at the introductory price of $5.00! Assuming this set
does well, I plan on releasing additional, more specialized sets. Some sets I am already working on include presets based on each land in Magic Kingdom,
dark ride specific presets, including Pirates of the Caribbean and
more.  Please leave a comment letting me know what specific presets you’d
like to see in future packs. Thanks for your interest!

Click on the Shop link in the top Navigation bar to see examples and purchase the presets.

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Disney

May the 4th Be With You Star Wars Celebration – Hollywood Studios

by Matthew Cooper
written by Matthew Cooper

I’ve been meaning to do this post for a while but like so many other things just never got around to it.  I have posted a few pics on Flickr from the May the 4th Be With You Limited Time Magic Event but wanted a way to show off a bunch of the images I took, even some of the non-flickr worthy ones.  I basically batch processed all of these in Lightroom but am overall pleased with the result.  You’ll notice with the Symphony in the Stars shots I should have totally shot further back.  Oh well, live and learn.  Be sure to chime in on the comments below or on Facebook with your thoughts and feedback.  Also if this is a format you guys and gals enjoy, I may try to do some more pieces like this with other attractions at Disney where I share a bunch of photos at once. Without further ado, here we go.

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Tutorial

Cinderella Castle Reflects on Wishes Process + Before and Afters

by Matthew Cooper
written by Matthew Cooper

I had a request to show some before and after shots to show just how far I take my photo processing.  This has been one of my most popular recent photos and I got quite a few questions about how I managed to pull it off.  While I’ll save the processing details  for another post let me show some details about how I did this shot and the before and after.
I camped out about 45-50 minutes before Wishes to get this spot.  I shot my  Nikon D800 with 24-70 2.8 using a B+W 1.8x ND Filter.  You can click any of the items to take you to Amazon to purchase.  I first shot the fireworks making very sure the tripod wasn’t moved during or after the pictures.  I did not recompose throughout the show.  The fireworks for this shot was a 73 second exposure which I believe covered most of the Villains portion of the show.  This gave me the following shot straight out of camera:

 

Once the fireworks were over I then took a 5 shot bracket to capture the scene itself.  The shot below is the straight out of camera of my +-0EV shot.

 Cinderella Castle Reflects on Wishes Before2

I edited my 5 images in Lightroom and then blended them using Photomatix.  I adjusted my sliders to taste which then gave me the following base image to begin working with in Photoshop.

I then blended my base shot and my fireworks shot (which I have at this point edited in Lightroom) which gave me the following:

 afterblend

As you can see it’s starting to take shape but there is still alot of work to be done.  There are issues with blending, reflections, edges that need to be cleaned up to make the blend more believable.  Once I have fixed those and the image looks clean I begin working on color balance, levels, curves, etc.  The details of that is far outside of the scope of this post but everything that gets me from the image above to the final image is done via layer adjustments.  All of these give me my final image.

Cinderella Castle Reflects on Wishes

I’d love to hear what you think of this post.  Please feel free to leave feedback below or on my Facebook Page.

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A Fire Warms Gaston's Tavern
Disney

A Fire Warms Gaston’s Tavern

by Matthew Cooper
written by Matthew Cooper

This is one of my favorite images I’ve edited from this past trip. When I started working on this shot I really wanted it to look and feel like you are in Gaston’s Tavern, not some themed quick service restaurant in a theme park. While this area looks very nice, the lighting in person leaves much to be desired with the bright Florida sunshine spilling in. As a friend of mine mentioned, in the movie, it’s cold and snowy outside Gaston’s Tavern. The inside should be warm and welcoming. I played off of this idea to really warm the lighting in this scene, and along with a few other fixes and tweaks really try to make Gaston’s Tavern a real place. I hope I succeeded and I’d love to hear your thoughts. Thanks for looking.

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This is EPCOT
Disney

This is Epcot

by Matthew Cooper
written by Matthew Cooper

I’m a day late for Monorail Monday.  Hopefully everyone will let it slide just this once as I was still fine tuning this shot.  The wife and I went on this most recent trip solely to not miss out on the Flower & Garden Festival.  I had never gotten to photograph it before and didn’t want to miss yet another year.  Once the trip was set in stone I started really thinking about some of the shots I wanted to get on this trip.  This shot was priority numero uno on my list of shots to get. Thanks to the Disney Park Manager mentioned in the previous post I had plenty of time to setup and take this shot.  I setup and while people trailed out of the parks I patiently waited as monorails came by and I captured them.  I actually had 4 chances (though I ended up using shots from monorail 1 and monorail 2) while I waited for everyone to clear out and take my final shots of the park empty.  I finally had a clearing and was able to snap off my bracket literally seconds before another group of people walked into frame. One of them being some dude with some epic Really Right Stuff gear /jealous. I packed up and wandered back further into Epcot for some more Spaceship Earth shooting.  Mission accomplished!

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