Disneyland photography blog
Sometimes Christmas decor is conspicuous even to the least attentive person. It blends in so well, other times, that you sort of have to find it. Frontierland is a perfect example and I adore the earthy, rustic charm of the design choices made for it during the holiday season with the heavy emphasis on dense, lush garlands and wreaths.
The Halloween Tree in Frontierland is probably my favorite Halloween time element at Disneyland. I really enjoy the expressions of all the different pumpkins adorning the tree. What’s even more fun is watching people pass by and notice them for the first time. It’s certainly easier to notice as the sun goes down and the lights come on!
This lonesome ghost came out to enjoy Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party when we attended last year. Actually he wasn’t really all that lonesome. There were throngs of people moseying their way through the Big Thunder Ranch area of Frontierland, bags of candy in hand. If the crowd isn’t solid and you have a little patience, you can still capture shots that look empty by using a long exposure time. As long as people keep moving, you can end up with a shot like this that’s nearly empty. That’s where the patience comes in.
Sometimes you’ll set up for a 30 second exposure and 20 seconds into it, someone may stop. If they do, they’ll probably show up in your image. Then you get to start again and hope for the best. At Disneyland, there’s a particularly pesky problem – things that glow. I’m not talking about the way Main Street pumpkins glow. I’m talking about the hodgepodge of flashing neon merchandise that can be purchased all over the Park. It’s easy to miss something like that in person. A child in a stroller may have a spinning Sorcerer Mickey that lights up. In person, something like that is hardly noticeable. In a 30 second exposure, it’s an unpleasant light streak that leaves you scratching your head for a moment when you review pictures after dropping them to your computer.
You know what they say — If at first you don’t succeed, snatch all the glowy things and crush them like the Incredible Hulk* — or something like that.
*This message is not endorsed by Tours Departing Daily, its subsidiaries or 4 out of 5 dentists.
One of my favorite parts of riding the Mark Twain is standing on the top deck and watching the steam. It floats off into the sky and lingers as though it weren’t ready to leave. Those steady sounding puffs thrust the vessel along the river and before you know it, it’s time for you to leave and make way to your next adventure.
The past few months have been some of the craziest and busiest the three of us have ever had. The chair at my desk seems like it needs a vacation almost as much as I do and I hope that time is coming very soon. I hope too that the time will be coming soon when we can share with you just what we have been working so diligently on. In any case, one of the greatest challenges in a hectic schedule or a pressure filled situation is to find or rediscover your center. What I mean by that is your quiet place. A place of peace. A place where you can see clearly your objective and the path that will take you there. A place where you can check your motives with all transparency. A place where you are certain of your purpose. Fortunately, having done this dance a time or two, I have a few ideas of where to look. Sometimes I look to the beauty of nature, which always seems to have a calming effect. There’s a simplicity to it, like a Frontierland sunset. Other times, a great story to escape into will help slough off what ails me, whatever form it may come in. Without fail, prayer puts me in this place. There’s just something about talking to my Creator that makes the complex things simple and the overwhelming noise a whisper.
Curiously, or maybe not so curiously, one of the most interesting things in Disneyland is the surface you walk on. There’s always a reason for it. What reason can there be, you might ask? Story. Disneyland’s ability to immerse you in its environment is directly tied to how well the story around you is told. Take Frontierland; the ground could have been any number of things that might remind you of the frontier (probably something like dirt). The Imagineers didn’t stop at dirt, however, they went so far as to put tracks in the pseudo-dirt. Horse tracks. Wagon tracks. Even cowboy boot tracks. Even then the tracks themselves tell a story. I’m not much of a tracker, so I couldn’t really tell you which horse has a limp back leg, but I’m pretty sure that the wagon driver spent a little too much time at the saloon! Next time you visit the Park, look at the ground, feel it beneath your feet and watch it shift and change with the story.
