This scene is probably the most famous of the Pirates of the Caribbean scenes. I can’t say it’s my favorite scene of the ride but it is my favorite to photograph and one of my absolute favorite scenes to edit.
Shooting & Editing Pirates of the Caribbean – A Prison Life
This was shot with the Nikon D810 and Nikon 24-70 2.8. Prime lenses for dark rides are popular but I absolutely love the 24-70 for Pirates of the Caribbean. It’s fast enough to capture most of the scenes well and the range works very well for shooting all of the scenes. As I mentioned before this trip was my first time shooting the ride with the new lighting scheme and it really is fantastic, both in person, and for photography. I’ve found editing my Pirates shots have been much easier to get the color right with the new lighting. You still get color casts but they aren’t as strong and other colors render much more accurately. Once again for this shot I edited using the technique I laid out in my video on Editing Pirates of the Caribbean. Be sure to check that video out if you want to see how I edit my Pirates of the Caribbean shots to look like this. Standard editing procedures apply of course but I take it one step further with a lot of light painting that I feel really helps my Pirates shots stand out. One other technique I really like to use on my dark ride shots, and especially ones with lots of shadow is to denoise just the shadows using a darks luminosity masks. This helps me keep the noisiest dark regions in check while not eliminating any of the detail anywhere else with DNR.
