Spaceship Earth is another one of the major Walt Disney World icons that no matter how many times I photograph it I just keep going back for more. In fact, I think Spaceship Earth offers more unique shots than Cinderella Castle. You’ve so many different features you can include such as the ground fiber optics here, the fountain on front and back, the Leave a Legacy stones, the front entrance planter, the monorails and more. Plus it really lends itself to shooting at some funky angles, far more than Cinderella Castle in my opinion. As for this shot I always try to shoot a couple different shots of Spaceship Earth with the fiber optic lights and with the ground wet I was really interested to see how it would effect the shot. The water had not puddled up here but you still had a nice sheen from the water. Ultimately it really enhanced the photo I believe. The shine on the ground is phenomenal and it really helped reflect those gorgeous purple and red colors. The yellow lights sprinkled in the color really looks great. I will mention it seems a year or two ago they changed the lighting scheme on Spaceship Earth a bit and I don’t like how it photographs as much as I did with the previous scheme. I’m not sure if they changed the colors up or just the type of lights but its definitely not the same.
This was shot with the Nikon D810 with the Nikon 14-24 2.8 at F8. I shot a 5 bracket exposure which I then chose to blend in Photomatix. I then blended a single exposure for the sky and did my signature blend of levels adjustments, color balancing and other techniques. Enjoy.