Dumbo in Motion

In the first shot I combined a shot of the Dumbo ride while it was stopped with the HDR version of it in motion so you could see what ride it was. Ideally I would of loved to have a shot with Dumbo froze midair that lined up with the blur. I have ideas for next time. In the second shot I like the way the ride is blurred from top to bottom and you can see detail of the scene behind the ride.

 

 

 

Mark Twain Paddle Boat Disneyland

Disneyland has a way of transporting you into the land of fantasy kind of like the stories Mark Twain wrote. You can hop on a the Mark Twain Riverboat and pretend you are on the Mississippi River on a paddle boat. When I think of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn I can't help but think of what a great way to grow up. Living on the Mississippi River living out real life adventures. It makes me think of my childhood and the adventures I had. I can go back to some of the places and they just don't feel the same as an adult. They don't have the same sense of intrigue, Disneyland transcends that having something of interest no matter how old you are. Photography has taught me to slow down and enjoy the moment. Whether I have a camera or not I watch the way the sun hits objects and rakes across them it changes from minute to minute.  I remember as a kid I would watch the shadows creep across the ground. I also watch clouds pass by in the sky and try to guess what they will do next. It is a great way to relax and forget your troubles. Looking at things differently is a new way to enjoy things. Quite often I learn a new technique or come up with a new idea and want to go back to a location I have been before to try something different. It's a way to keep thing fresh and new.

I used a longer shutter speed to get a sense of motion. This image is tone mapped due to the motion you can not line up two images. The boat is not as sharp as I would normally like but that is the trade off to show objects in motion. I could of used a shorter shutter speed but that would freeze the paddle wheel.

This image could have been tone mapped due to the low contrast caused by the over cast sky. I realized that after I tone mapped the image above and it showed just as much detail after I had created this one in HDR and composted the white boat in from a single shot of the boat.

Emily and Jacob Christmas 2012

I tone mapped this image using Nik Software's   HDR Efex Pro 2 Tone Mapping. I shot the image using camera RAW and I could of ran it through the RAW processor with different results because you have different adjustments. Tone mapping is similar to HDR but using a single image to get a HDR look. My wife wanted an "artistic" portrait to send out with Christmas cards. She did not want me to post this until the Cards were sent out to our friends and relatives. Unfortunatly the lab did not process the prints very well and we did not have a chance to get them out for Christmas. I have essentially tone mapped another image in another post. I did not understand what tone mapping was and went through a lot of extra steps. It is one of my favorite images that I have ever taken. It is of a purple Mercury in the post Pacific Coast Dream Machines Automobiles. I shot for an HDR image, but this was the only image that did not have distracting elements similar to the post Taking Control of the Uncontrollable but I did not shoot extra shots. I was still new to HDR at the time. Tone mapping does not have the same dynamic range as HDR, but it mimics the look. Shooting in RAW allows you to save some of the dynamic range as opposed to shooting in jpeg. RAW format does not compress the data and allows you more leeway with your adjustments.

New Orleans Square Disneyland

New Orleans Square has always been my favorite place in Disneyland. It is where I fell in love with chocolate pecan pie at the Blue Bayou restaurant. I have never been to New Orleans, but I hope to make it some day. I know I would eat lots of food and listen to jazz music. The following images are roughly the same area one taken during the day with a cool tone from the overcast sky and one taken at night with a warm tone due to the tungsten lighting. Both shots were taken shortly after a rainstorm which helps bring out a rich tone on the ground surfaces. The rain also ads a slight reflection adding more color to the scene.

 

You can almost count on a kid walking by with one of those light up toys that spins to walk by at any time of night in Disneyland. I used the shot with the lighted toy to add color and mystery to the image. Whys is the light there? Who had the toy? What kind of toy? ...............etc.

Main Street Disneyland

Main Street is designed to look like Main Street Marceline, Missouri (Walt Disney's boyhood town) in the early 20th century. On Main Street Walt Disney honors people that have contributed to the park with there names in the shop windows. It's a nice way to step back in time and get away from the fast pace of life. Seeing the old cars, horse and buggies, barbershop quartets, old ice cream, candy stores and penny arcades. During Christmas it is also nice to see the Christmas decorations and the caroler's. I like the Esmeralda fortune telling machine it reminds me of the Zoltar machine in Big.

  

It's a Small World Chritsmas Time (composition)

I'll be the first to admit I am not happy with the composition of this image. I wish I was to the left so you could read the It's a Small World sign and lower so the sign and the ride were two separate elements rather than one. I still think it is worth posting for the people who have never seen Disneyland with the Christmas decorations up.

King Arthur's Carousel (photo merge)

The image below is of King Arthur's Carousel at Disneyland. When I shot it I did not notice I did not get all of the carousel. I was disappointed, but remembered photo merge in Photoshop. I figured I would try to save the image. Before I used photo merge I had to align the image because it was shot off kilter. I then copied the original image and flipped it so I could try to use the left side information to complete the right side of the image as if it were shot for a panoramic image. I could not get the images to align with out checking the geometric distortion correction which is why you see the curve in the bottom of the image. I made a blank layer under the final image and filled it with black. You can not see it on the top because the sky is so dark. After I merged the two images I flipped it again because there were blemishes where Photshop did not blend it well. I then made a mask that was black to remove the whole image and painted white to remove the blemishes and the a little cleanup with the clone stamp tool, healing brush and paint brush in color mode. The resulting image is just below.

 

 

This is the original image that was shot. I did not notice that I cut the right side of the carousel off until I tried to process the image. I originally was going to scrap the shot, but then thought of photo merge to try and save it.

 

I flipped this image after it was aligned in a layer on top of the middle image in this post. You can tell if you look at the top of the right hand side of the image you can see the lights from the top of the carousel.

Other images from Disneyland are at the follwing link The Magic of Walt Disney.

The Magic of Walt Disney

Even though Walt Disney  (December 5, 1901 – December 15, 1966) passed on less than one year into my life his legacy lives on in our minds, the origional Disneyland park and the Disney animation. His nephew Roy E. Disney  son of Roy O. Disney (co-founder of what is now The Walt Disney Company) was the last member of the Disney family to be actively involved in the company. The company continues to grow in 2006 bought Pixar which made Apple's Steve Jobs Disney's largest shareholder. Just recently on October 30, 2012 The Walt Disney Company purchased Lucasfilm. The Walt Disney Company continues to open more parks and resorts around the world. All this started because Walt Disney wanted a place where adults and their children could go and have fun together.

Keep an eye out for  more posts of images I took while I was in Disneyland and a tutorial explaining what it took to process the first image in this post.