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.
