Disney Photography Tips

[MarkBarbieri]

Frame Your Subject

You can sometimes make a nice picture by using elements in the scene to create a "frame" around your subject. It could be trees on either side of them, the walls of a tunnel, or just about anything that works as a frame.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

Request - a good example of second curtain sync.

Request - a good example of positioning people and your subject to complement each other rather than to just be near each other. Extreme8 gave a good example in the last thread.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

Festival of the Lion King Shooting Tips

It's pretty dark and there is a lot of action. That makes for a difficult subject. Don't get discourage if you try your best and you don't get many (or any) good shots. Low light action photography is hard and it's one area where expensive cameras and lenses give a shooter a huge advantage.

First, set up your camera to get the best possible shots in the lowest light. For basic cameras, that means using some type of night shot mode. For fancier cameras, that means setting the ISO to the highest ISO that you are comfortable with (some cameras have ISO settings that are so noisy you don't want to use them). It also means opening the aperture as wide as possible.

Motion is your enemy. That means motion in your camera and motion in your subject. To help with your camera, turn on your image stabilizer if you have one. Use a monopod if you have one. Practice holding your camera really still when you take shots.

Subject motion is tough. This is a high energy show. I've never seen a really sharp picture of a monkey doing acrobatics. Your best option here is to shoot people that aren't moving much.

Here's a shot where the leads were standing in place getting each section to give their call.

There is one part of this show where motion actually makes for a good picture. Anytime you have a bright light source moving against a dark background, you can get some interesting motion effects from a relatively long exposure. The longer exposure gives the light source time to move around the picture. In the FotLK, the flame dude is good subject for this technique.

This is a 1/4 second exposure. Even with the image stabilizer, I didn't do a very good job of keeping the camera steady. A tripod would really have helped. Still, the subject is the trail of fire, which doesn't really need to be sharp, so the picture is OK anyway.

Because the fire is so bright, it's not really possible to get a good exposure for both the flames and the fire dude. With no disrepect for the fire dude, I think the flames make for a more interesting picture, so try to expose for them rather than the guy.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

Pan to Show Motion

When taking pictures of things that are moving quickly, you have two options. You can use a high shutter speed, which freezes the motion, or you can use a low shutter speed and pan with the potion.

The first approach makes it easy to get a nice sharp shot of the subject. The problem is that creates a bizarre and unnatural looking photo. In the picture below, we know that the care is flying quickly through the air, but it just sort of seems frozen there. I don't think it makes for a very compelling story.

When you pan, you set the shutter speed to something relatively low (1/30 of a second will do) and you track the subject with your camera while you are taking the picture. When you do it well, your subject stays sharp and the background has a motion blur. This gives the viewer a sense of speed.

If you want to really make things look fast, you can use a very long shutter speed and track much further. Some image stabilizers have a special mode that helps with panning. In other cases, your image stabilizer might actually try to "correct" the panning motion and make things worse. Try pacticing on cars at home to see what works best for you.

I can't pan to save my life, so I cheat. I take the shot with a high shutter speed to freeze the action. Then I cut out my subject in photoshop and apply motion blur to the background. Then I paste subject back down on the picture. When shooting cars, I also apply radial blur to the wheels so that they look like they are spinning. It would be a lot easier to shoot it right in the first place, but that never seems to work for me.

You can use the same trick for relatively slow subjects to make them look fast as well.

 

[Dan Murphy]

Great tips, Mark, and to those who have added. Bookmarking this one to refer to over time.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

Good Photography Is a Bunch of Crop

It's pretty common to get home and see that your shot wasn't framed perfectly. That's when the crop tool (my favorite) comes into play. Use it to chop out elements that you don't want. Use it to shift your subject up, down, left, or right. Sometimes you can even make two different interesting photos from one original just by cropping it differently.

These are the same pictures, but in the bottom one, I cropped out all of the boring parts.

When you crop, it is usually a good idea to use the same aspect ratio. That's a guideline, not a rule; sometimes using a different aspect ratio works better. Just be judicious, going through a collection of photos each with its own aspect ratio can be visually confusing.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

Quick Panoramas

Shooting really good panoramic shots often invovles special hardware and/or stiching toghether multiple pictures. An easier way is just to crop out the top and bottom of the picture. This technique doesn't let you get wider shots than your camera can normally take, but it does work well for subjects when you want to stress how long or how tall they are.

On our last trip, we rented a towncar to take us home from the airport. It wasn't any more expensive than parking at the airport and it was a lot less hassle. The towncar company was so busy on the day we got back, all they had left to pick us up with was a limo.

The kid's loved it. To stress the "stretch" of the limo, I thought the shot worked better cropped like a panorama.

Another place this works really well is at the World Showcase Lagoon. Ever stood on the shore and taken a wide shot trying to get in as many countries as possible? You probably also got a whole of sky or water. Unless you were lucky and had an interesting sky or a calm, reflective water, those were probably large parts of your photo with no visual interest. Crop them out so you have an interesting panorama instead.

 

[photo_chick]

Talking about posing, and composition--- threes work. In design three really is the magic number. It provides a sense of symmetry and balance when there really is none. Everyone in a straight line is boring. But if you group in threes it can become more interesting. I don't have any images to show of it, anyone got any group shots where you can show the triangles in people placement? The only ones I can point to are other peoples work, and given recent topics I won't do that!

 

[MarkBarbieri]

Here's a quick example of using "three", in this case faces.

A related rule is that you should try to compose with triangles. I the photo above, there is an obvious triangle bordered by the bottom of the picture and my wife's arms.

 

[photo_chick]

Is this the kind of thing you are looking for with motion at night?

Both shots I used a tripod and bracketed to get what I wanted. The first with the Christmas lights is a scan of a 35mm slide. The second is digital, shot with the Rebel XT set at ISO 100.

 

[wannabatwdw]

Thanks Mark for starting this thread. I am such a newbie. I am copying the hints and how to carry them out onto index cards to carry in my camera bag!

 

[photo_chick]

I think there is something to be said for capturing the emotion on a ride. Sometimes it is really hard to get a technically perfect shot of a kid on a moving ride. This one the sweet spot is not right on my DD and some find that annoying. But this is still a great shot to me because it captures my DD's joy on this ride. Remember these are your memories and just because they are not technically perfect does not make them any less of a great shot. OF course I think every shot of my kids is a great one!

BTW... It took me three rounds on this roller coaster to get this one, with her in the light where I wanted it. I got lucky with her expression.

this one it was getting dark, but they were too far away for a flash. I still like it because of their expressions.

 

[Lizziejane]

Take a Few Extras

Nothing annoys me more than spending 5 minutes getting a shot set up and then finding out when I get home that someone blinked during the picture. Aargh! Have you ever tried painting open eyes on a blinker in Photoshop? Not fun.

I recently read a tip that when shooting a group, have everyone close their eyes for five seconds, then tell them when to open (presumably, you've got everything else set up). I haven't tried it yet, so don't know if it actually works!!

 

[Pea-n-Me]

Oops, I didn't see this thread until just now and I started a thread about composition which I see you've covered a lot of.

I'm still in learning mode but what I'd like to add to this thread is one thing I like to do: take shots from behind. They, too, can be very special.

Here, my DS is watching his dad parasail (he's up in the air.)

And my children, in pj's, enjoying their first sunrise (the morning after their 6th birthday) on our first Disney cruise.

This one's a little blurry, but my DD (in sparkly black) is doing the Chicken Dance with Daisy Duck.

 

[mabas9395]

Wrap That Rascal

There are places at Disney where there is a good risk of getting wet (like Splash Mountain). Rather than leave your camera in your travel bag, bring along a plastic bag from the grocery store. Take all the shots you want until just before splashdown, then shove the camera in the plastic bag to protect it from splashes.

You can still take all the shots you want during splashdown. This may be the winner for my most overly posted shot here on the DIS, but I just put my Rebel XT and 28-135 in a 1 gallon ziploc bag with the lens sticking out the opening. Then closed it best I could with a UV/protective filter and lens hood on for added protection. This GIF was made from about 20 shots I made using high burst mode going down splash mountain with my two boys in front of me. May be risky, but I'm glad I did it.

 

[Jeninpa]

Okay, I am by far not an expert,lol. I do however have a good 10yrs experience in. I have 4 kids and have had digital camera's for 7yrs. I take 100 pics on an ordinary day and have taken 2000 on a 7 day cruise. Here are my tips I like to give people:


The subject does not always have to be looking at the camera and your picture doesn't even need to have their face in the pic:

I love close-ups of little ones hands and feet. You'll look back and think OMG they were so little,lol:

Sometimes I just randomly snap close-ups when there is nothing even exciting going on and end up with some pretty neat memories:

This one isn't from anything Disney but, sometimes I like to try taking pics when the kids aren't always just standing there,lol. I also have a habit of filling the frame:

Different angles make your photo's more interesting. You don't always have to take pics of everything eye-level:

Shadows look neat in sepia photo's:

I hope these are helpful tips people can use and not stupid,lol. I also have a cheap Panasonic Lumix LZ2 camera,lmao.

 

[photo_chick]

Jeninpa--- thanks for showing that it is possible to capture great images with a point and shoot.

 

[wdwpluto]

Request - I'd like to see some good tips with examples showing long exposures to capture motion at night.

My biggest tip for long exposures? Tripod, tripod, tripod! I prefer to shoot in aperature priority (just in general) and I bracket a few stops up and a few stops down to vary the amount of motion.

Osbourne Lights 2006

EXIF: 1.3 sec @ f/4.5 ISO 200, tripod, no flash

EXIF: 0.2 sec @ f/4.5 ISO 200, tripod, no flash

Tripod, or in this case, trash can, allows for a long-ish exposure to capture the lights, but gives motion blur to moving subjects

EXIF: 0.167 sec @ f/4 ISO 1600 tripod, no flash

Request - a good example of second curtain sync.

Second curtain synch is fun at Pleasure Island or inside clubs like Jellyrolls. By setting the flash to second curtain, it ensures that the flash trails are behind the subject instead of in front of them, while freezing the motion of the main subject.

EXIF: 2 sec @ f/4.5 ISO 400, handheld, second curtain synch flash
Bonus game: name the Dis-ers in this shot!

 

[PhotobearSam]

Don't Just Stand there!


Once you take a picture of something, don't just stand there. Move around it, get at least 2 different angles and at least one close up...Challenge yourself to see thigs differently.

We had an exercise at school to do. We had to take a picture of a refridgerator. Well, most people took a few pics of the outside and even from different angles and one or 2 opened the door and took a pic of the inside.

ME, I opened the door, laid onthe floor and shot up at it, did close ups of the egg cups, the handle, the screws holding the door and the back where the tubes are...Outcome: I got an A and the next person only got a B-

You have to take the safe shot and them take a few more not so safe ones...


From one trip...

Next trip...

I love that no matter how many times you have been to Disney, you can still take different pics and even old things can be new again.

 

[spoon2003]

Mark,
Thanks for starting this thread and all who contributed! Just in time for our cruise and land next week!!

Sue