Picture This!

What a difference three years make when I put out my first Christmas buying guide on the Picture This! Photoblog. Used to be Black Friday (the Friday after Thanksgiving in the United States), was the only time you could get amazing deals on everything from apparel to electronics. Now, retailers are putting out door buster deals throughout the month of November. Not to be left out, online retailers like Amazon and Dell have jumped in. This all makes for a great time of year to be looking for a new dSLR camera and accessories.

Books. In this age of the Internet, it seems funny to be recommending books each year. Photography books are hot sellers as digital photography grows each year. I do a lot of online research but a book is still a great way to become engrossed in a subject without distractions and when being online is not possible.

Scott Kelby released his third Digital Photography Book for those who already have the first two books. If you don't have these books or know a phtographer in your life, there's a new three volume box set available. These books, in short, concise one page per subject format, gives great tips and tricks to get the results of professional photographers. The books are easy to pack and carry, too.

As you know, I am a big fan of Joe McNally. His book, The Moment It Clicks, was a huge success and has inspired me in my quest to find special moments in my photography. This year, Joe came out with a book on using off-camera speedlight flashes. These flashes are a big mystery to most of us. Though it does focus on Nikon cameras and flashes, The Hot Shoe Diaries: Big Light from Small Flashes, is another book to inspire you to learn how to use these speedlights in new and creative ways.

A book released earlier this year which I have not been able to read is Within the Frame: The Journey of Photographic Vision by David DuChemin. It's been getting excellent reviews and is on my Wish List this year.

For more book recommendations from Barrie, Lisa and I, visit the AllEars Amazon Photography Book Store.

Each year I recommend some cool stuff for us dSLR photographers, this year I'm going to do it by using links to past articles which have links to the products I mention in them. Ready? Here we go!

If you are still using the kit lens or lenses that came with your camera, I recommend picking up a Nifty-Fifty which is a 50mm, f/1.8 prime lens. These lenses are great for learning how to use and control our cameras. Not to mention their value in getting dark ride photos at Disney and other themeparks. Another new lens from Nikon is the 35mm f/1.8 for DX (cropped) cameras which gives a more normal focal length.

One of the best lenses I have purchased in the past year was the Tokina 11-16mm Ultra Wide Angle. It has brought a whole new way I look at things at Disney and elsewhere.

If you are ready to do some serious night and low-light photography, a tripod is a must and I showed you how to plan for using one at Walt Disney World earlier this year.

To see the rest of our recommendations for photographic accessories, go to the All Ears Accessories Store.

I checked and all the links from my previous Christmas Gift Guides still work and will give you more great ideas for your photography gift giving needs.

1st dSLR Christmas Gift Giving Guide

2nd Annual dSLR Christmas Gift Giving Guide

Go luck if you venture out for Black Friday next week!

Perspective is defined as " to look through". For photographers, it means to look at something differently. To find new perspectives. At Walt Disney World, where people take millions of photographs each year, finding new perspectives can seem a daunting task. I look at it as finding "my" perspective and sometimes a little help can open up whole new ways of looking at things.

The photo below of Minnie Mouse's statuette was pointed out to me by another photographer. I have seen similar photos on flickr, too. But, I had never seen it at dusk with an orange castle softly focused in the background which turned out to be "my" perspective on this subject.

Minnie Mouse admiring Cinderella Castle.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/10s, f/4.8, ISO 1600, EV +0.3, 52mm Focal Length

After riding the latest version of Spaceship Earth, I was pleased to see the exhibit area being used again. The new sponsor, Siemens AG, has created Project Tomorrow: Inventing the Wonders of the Future. As you enter the exhibit, you can not help but notice the huge Earth before you. In a bit of technological wizardry, the photo that was taken early in the ride of you has now appeared indicating the location where you live. Project Tomorrow houses interactive exhibits featuring various Siemens AG technology. These interactive displays and games allow guests to see the future of medicine, transportation and energy management.

Project Tomorrow exhibit area in Spaceship Earth.
Nikon D70/Tokina 11-16, 1/30s, f/2.8, ISO 1400, EV +0.3, 11mm Focal Length

How I took this photo: You will notice I was standing in the middle of the ramp from the ride exit (you can see the railings on the far left and right of the photo). As much as I would have liked to set up a tripod, I doubt Disney security would have approved. I had on a fast lens, the Tokina 11-16 f/2.8, set to it's widest aperture of f/2.8 and focal length of 11mm. My camera, a Nikon D70, was set to Auto ISO which only allowed the shutter speed to go as slow as 1/30th of a second. At this exposure, the camera set the ISO at 1400. I took this hand held using Da Grip. This is one of several images I took in burst mode and the best of the lot. I had good timing as I did not get run over by any other guests coming off the ride.

Mistakes. We all make them. Most of the time when we make a mistake, it doesn't work out to good. Sometimes you get a pleasant surprise. Such as the case in the photo below of Expedition EVEREST taken from the bridge between Africa and Discovery Island. I had just finished walking the Pangani Forest Exploration Trail and had my camera in Aperture Priority mode and set to it's largest f-stop of f/2.8. That is best for taking animal portraits with and not landscapes. Well, I forgot and took this photo. I didn't realize what I had done until later when I was on the other side of the park. What do you think? Ideally, I would have used f/11 to f/16.

Expedition Everest Telephoto Landscape.
Nikon D70/70-200VR, 1/3200s, f/2.8, ISO 200, EV -0.3, 70mm Focal Length

Using a telephoto lens, even a short one, compresses the image captured by the camera's sensor. The compression worked here to keep the depth of field small enough to keep the image in focus almost from front to back. Remember, with my camera crop of 1.5x, this is the equivalent to a 105mm telephoto lens (70mm x 1.5). There is softness in the extreme areas and I wouldn't want to print this any bigger than an 8" x 12".

Being Disney fans, we consider every hour at a Disney park or resort magical. In photography, each day has two Magic Hours. These are the half hour before and after sunrise and sunset. When the sun is low or just below the horizon, it creates amazing colors in the sky and on the objects around us. Landscape photographers know this and will show up far in advance of the morning or evening magic hours to set up their equipment in hopes of catching something spectacular.

I have talked about watching the sky as you walk around a Disney park before. In the photo below, I was taking a break at the Noodle Station seating area when I noticed how the light was starting to illuminate Cinderella Castle with a lovely golden color. I took many photos over the next several minutes and liked this one the best.

Golden sunlight illuminates Cinderella Castle.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/25s, f/16, ISO 200, EV +0, 18mm Focal Length

The above photo is more awareness than planning. My next trip to Walt Disney World is in early December. Checking the calendar for December, I found the Animal Kingdom will have Evening Extra Magic Hours (EMH) on Wednesday, the 2nd. Normally, Animal Kingdom closes before sunset so this is an opportunity to get some unique photos. One that came to mind is to get a Magic Hour photo of Expedition Everest but what time should I be there to get it?

The Internet quickly gave me the answer. I found the U.S. Naval Oceanography website had a Complete Sun and Moon Data for One Day page which calculates sunrise, sunset, moonrise and moonset for any day and for any city in the world. To find out when the Sun would set on the EMH, I entered in December 2, 2009. Selected Florida for the state in the United States and the city of Orlando in Form A and pressed the Get Data button. It told me sunset would happen at 5:28 PM which tells me I should be set up at least by 5:00 PM. Local weather might interfere but the chances of me getting a spectacular photo have increased with this knowledge.

There are other sites with even more information like the compass reading where the sun will set on the horizon. Given that information and an accurate map, you can determine the best location to get front lighting, side lighting or backlighting at locations you want to photograph at.

Many times I have taken a photo which looked good in the viewfinder but, when reviewing it in the camera's LCD display, not so much. It happens when I am not careful and forget to look around the edges before pressing the shutter release. In the photo below I was intent on Space Mountain before me and missed all the foliage and tree limbs intruding. Now, I could just crop this photo in software. However, cropping too much loses image resolution and can make a photo grainy when viewing a smaller, cropped version.

Wide view of Space Mountain.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/320s, f/9, ISO 200, EV +0.3, 29mm Focal Length

In this case, I decided to use the power of the zoom lens and "crop in camera" by zooming in from 29mm to 75mm. I, also, took two images. One in a landscape orientation and, the one below, in a portrait orientation.

In camera cropped view of Space Mountain.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/60s, f/16, ISO 200, EV +0.3, 75mm Focal Length

By doing the crop in the camera, it saves me time later at the computer. The image is cleaner and has your camera's full resolution for printing or displaying electronically.

I recently attended a photo workshop where I saw some fantastic panoramic images. As the presenter went through the steps to create them, I got so excited that when I got home last night I searched through my Walt Disney World photos to see if I had any candidates for a panoramic.

Though I did find some including the example I am showing you today, you really need to create images with the panoramic image in mind. Here's a list of tips when photographing for panoramics:

1. Use a level tripod. The key here is to make stitching the images together easier for the software. I will tell you the software I tried was very good a finding a way to match up images even if hand held. So, if you are going out to specifically create panoramic photos, then use a tripod. If you are in the middle of a themepark without one, go ahead and hand hold.

2. Use the same exposure for all images. Again, this will make matching up the images easier. Also, another good use of the Manual mode.

3. Make your exposures as fast as possible. This is help keep all your images even and, if you have any moving subjects, it will keep down the movements of those subjects.

4. Avoid using a polarizer filter. If you are trying to capture a wide expanse of sky, a polarizer will cause different hues as the camera is moved from one image to another and the angle to the sun changes.

5. If using a digital camera, turn off Auto White Balance (AWB). AWB can change the color cast of an image as the light changes from one image to another. If it's cloudy out, use the Cloudy setting. If bright sun, use the Sunny setting, etc.

6. Overlap the Images. For best results, overlap the images about 20% if you are using focal lengths of 35mm and up. If you are using a wide angle lens then increase that to 40 to 50% because wide angles can distort at the edges.

Now, let's create a panoramic of these two photos I took of a sunset at Epcot's World Showcase. As you can see they are level as I was using a tripod. They have enough overlap to make the stitching easy for software or to manually match them up if I choose to do so.

I have my photos selected. I edited them the same and matched up the sky colors as best as I could. Check to see if the software you use to edit photos with has a panoramic tool built-in. The last few versions of Photoshop has it and is called Photomerge. I tried out a few different programs and liked Arcsoft's Panorama Maker 5 (for PC or Mac) the best. It automatically did the hard work of stitching the photos together and even has virtual framing options available. There are many other programs out there so try them out to see which one is best for you. Here's the final version after Panorama Maker 5 got done with it's magic.

World Showcase Sunset Panoramic

Something to keep in mind. While this is a horizontal panoramic, I saw some vertical ones during the workshop which were gorgeous. I'll be looking for panoramic opportunities on my next visit to a Disney resort.

Mickey's MouseKosh overalls drying near the garden outside his Country House in Toontown Fair.
Nikon D70/50mm, 1/640s, f/1.8, 200 ISO, +0.6 EV

Drying outside his Country House's garden, Mickey's MouseKosh overalls are selectively focused. By setting the aperture to f/1.8 on my nifty-fifty (50mm prime lens) and carefully focusing on the overalls throwing the background out of focus for my Disney Pic of the Week on the technique of Selective Focus.

Last week I gave you some of my favorite photography links, this week I want to talk about one of those links. Photofocus by photography Scott Bourne wrote an article entitled, "10 Ways to Know You Made a Good Picture". Most of them I have talked about here before like exposure, light, backgrounds, composition and some others.

Then I came upon number 7: Emotion. The photograph should evoke some emotion. Any emotion will do. But really good photographs cause an emotional reaction. When I am looking at photos by other photographers on flickr and Disney and photography forums, the ones that grab me have always evoked some sort of emotion. Many times it's "Wow! Wish I had taken that!". Others makes me smile, laugh, wonder, empathize, envy, mad, sad and a host of other emotions.

The photo I choose below of the two young princesses posing for a photograph for their parents in front of Cinderella Castle in the Magic Kingdom, gave me two kinds of emotions. The first was when I took the photo. The girls looked so cute and I could not help but smile. Later, when I pulled the photo up on my computer, I laughed at their styling royal footwear. Just perfect for a day in a Magic Kingdom.

Two young princesses sporting the latest in royal footwear posing for a photo in front of Cinderella Castle.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/60s, f/16, ISO 200, EV +0.3, 112mm Focal Length

Take a minute to read over Scott Bourne's article and try to keep them in mind as you are photographing not just at a Disney themepark but anytime.

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Self Portrait in front of Goofy's Candy Company in Downtown Disney.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 8s, f/16, ISO 200, +1.0 EV, 18mm Focal length, Tripod

Still vacationing (not at Walt Disney World this time) and will return soon!

One of the first things you learn in any basic book or course on photography is to keep the Sun at your back when taking an outdoor photo. Yet, there at times when having the Sun in your photo creates interesting light patterns, flare and, when stopping down the lens, star effect. Remember NOT to look directly at the Sun as that will cause damage to your eyes. Very carefully put the sun in a corner, lower or upper half of the frame. Use a small aperture in the f/16, f/22 or f/32 range to cut down the amount of light entering the camera when the shutter is pressed.

This is what I did when heading towards the summit of Expedition EVEREST in Disney's Animal Kingdom. The Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 ultra wide angle lens has a 9-bladed diaphragm and creates lovely stars of bright light sources at f/22 and you can't get much brighter than the Sun.

Sun near the summit of Everest.
Nikon D70/Tokina 11-16, 1/400s, f/22, ISO 200, +0.3 EV, 11mm Focal length

I found this link to 25 Excellent Sun Flare Photography Examples showing some outstanding photos featuring the Sun. Here's more tips for achieving artistic lens flare. Have fun and be careful!

One of the great events at each year's MagicMeets is the silent auction for the Make-A-Wish Foundation® of America. This auction is run by Lou Mongello’s Dream Team Project volunteers and features hundreds of items for people to bid on. So far the auctions have raised $32,000 for Make-A-Wish. It's a beautiful way to share the Disney spirit!

Last year I was asked to donate something and I chose a professionally framed 16x20 inch print from one of my Animal Kingdom photos. This year I am again donating a framed print. A replica you can see below. This is a photo you may have seen here before as I used it when I talked about using tripods at Walt Disney World earlier this year.

Replica of framed Twilight Zone Tower of Terror print.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 25s, f/18, 200 ISO, EV +0.3, 80mm Focal length

When you decide to make a print of one of your digital images, you have to process it a bit differently than if you were going to display it in a digital frame or on the Internet. For instance, you must sharpen it differently and more aggressively. Have in mind the size you want to print it at and crop accordingly. For the Tower of Terror photo, I knew I was going to print it at 16x20 so I cropped it for an 8x10 (which is the same ratio as a 16x20). Set the DPI (dots per inch) at a minimum of 300. The human eye can not tell the difference beyond 300 DPI. As a comparison, most web images are at 72 DPI which create much smaller file sizes and load faster on our screens.

If you want to make sure what you see on your screen is what you'll see come out on your printer you should color calibrate both the computer's display screen and printer. You should check out your software's manual and supporting websites to get specific information regarding preparing your images for printing.

I use an online printer who color corrects and sharpens as needed before printing. For this year's auction print, I chose to use Kodak Professional Endura Metallic paper which is supposed to produce a striking, three-dimensional-like image. I'll let you know! I will have a local professional frame shop do the framing. What's nice about working with a local frame shop is you can bring the print in and match it up with a sample of hundreds of framing materials to find just the right one for the photo.

For those of you attending next week's MagicMeets, I'll be around photographing and helping out at the AllEars.net booth. Stop by and say "Hi!".

I know, that is not a title to a Disney movie but Meet the Robinsons really did not fit for this article (see, I got a Disney movie reference in anyway!).

It's been over two years since I took the photo of Cinderella Castle from the Tomorrowland Transit Authority and it's still one of my favorites. It's one of the first photos I shared here on the AllEars.net Picture This! blog. Even before Lisa came on board to help out Barrie and I. As much as I like this photo, I always thought the colors looked faded and there was too much clutter in the foreground and to both sides.

Original Photo of Cinderella Castle at Dusk.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/250s, f/8, 400 ISO, EV -0.3, 80mm Focal length

Over this time, I have learned a lot about digital photo processing. I am sure you have or will do the same. It's a good exercise to return to some of your older work and look at it from the prospective of your new knowledege of post-processing. This is what I did with this photo.

Using Apple's Aperture 2 software, I first cropped it to eliminate what I considered clutter. In doing so I found I liked a portrait (more vertical) composition than the original landscape (horizontal) one. I, then, started to select different areas of the sky with the color dropper selection tool and enhanced them making them more vibrant. Your software may have a different way of doing this so consult the manual. I had to remove some sensor spots (I had not learned how to clean my camera's sensor yet) and adjusted the exposure to eliminate any overexposed areas. Lastly, I applied sharpening to clean up the edges. The result you see below.

Adjusted Photo of Cinderella Castle at Dusk.

When you are not able to go and create new images, look back at your photo archives and "see" the future. It's a lot of fun and a good way to learn the capabilities of your photo editing software.

Tom Sawyer Island (or TSI for short) is billed as a giant-sized playground geared to youngsters. I would like to add it's a wonderful place for photographers. Many interesting and challenging subjects await you to capture, lots of activities for the kids and unique views of Frontierland and Liberty Square.

Tom Sawyer Island is actually two islands separated by a bridge which holds it's own surprise for those walking over it. The map below shows all the trails and activities to explore.

Map of Tom Sawyer Island greets guests arriving to explore it's secrets.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/125s, f/8, 200 ISO, EV 0, 18mm Focal length, Flash used

In this week's Picture This! photo blog, I am going to show you Harper's Mill island. Harper's Mill is a very interesting structure with links to Walt Disney Animation and it's musical heritage. (Thanks to Jack Spence for uncovering these!)

Sign for Harper's Mill on Tom Sawyer Island.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/125s, f/5.6, 200 ISO, EV -0.3, 18mm Focal length

Are you scared of dark, enclosed places? Then you might want to skip going into Injun Joe's Cave though Tom Sawyer tells you he has not been seen lately. For those of you brave enough, there are lots to find from fossils to a lava lighted face. A steady hand is needed when photographing in the cave.

A lighted face found in Injun Joe's Cave.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/4s, f/3.5, 1600 ISO, EV -0.0, 18mm Focal length

Having survived Injun Joe's Cave, you come out on the other side of the island. Going right leads you to the barrel bridge which is great fun when open. I was not so lucky as the bridge was closed for repairs so I headed up the hill where I passed this brook running down to the Rivers of America which surrounds Tom Sawyer Island. When photographing moving water, you either want to freeze it like a crashing wave onto rocks or blur it's movement with a slow shutter speed like for a waterfall.

A Brook on Tom Sawyer Island using a slow shutter speed.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/15s, f/5.6, 200 ISO, EV -0.3, 18mm Focal length

Moving on, I came upon Aunt Polly's counter service location. Disney only runs Aunt Polly's during the busiest times of the year and was closed when I was there. There are snacks and drinks via machines, lots of picnic tables to relax on and even some rocking chairs to nap in.

Nap time at Aunt Polly's on Tom Sawyer Island.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/60s, f/20, 200 ISO, EV -0.3, 44mm Focal length

From Aunt Polly's you can view Liberty Square's Haunted Mansion in all it's spooky glory. Being in such a peaceful place away from the crowds, I was able to enjoy the many details of the Haunted Mansion and it's theming from the covered queue to the bat shaped wind vanes (doubling as lighting rods) on the roof.

The Haunted Mansion from Aunt Polly's.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/60s, f/20, 200 ISO, EV -0.3, 18mm Focal length

Leaving Aunt Polly's I came upon some unfinished work of Tom Sawyer's. A lovely sentiment but I doubt the owner of the fence was none to thrilled with Tom's work.

Some unfinished work by Tom and Huck.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/250s, f/8, 200 ISO, EV -0.3, 18mm Focal length

This concludes our tour of the first of two islands which make up Tom Sawyer Island. Next week, we'll explore a frontier fort, a mine and another unique view of the Magic Kingdom.

It is not a coincidence that I am featuring a photo of The Spirit of America Fife and Drum Corps as Deb Wills did early this month. With this post happening the day before America celebrates it's 233rd birthday on July 4th, 2009, I wanted to add on to Deb's excellent post (psst, Deb I think this is called "synergy") and show you something which surprised me.

I've seen the Fife and Drum Corps on several of my visits yet never had I stopped to watch them. I made it a point to do so on my last trip and enjoyed their preformance immensely. I believe they do several different routines. The one I had the pleasure of seeing included a salute to each of the United States Armed Forces. They played each theme song for the Air Force, Army, Navy and the Marines. It was during their salute to the Marines that they took the formation of the raising of the flag on the island of Iwo Jima during World War II. Everyone applauded and it gave me patriotic goose-bumps to hear and see this as I had no idea that was coming.

The Spirit of America Fife and Drum Corps performing outside the American Adventure.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/200s, f/18, ISO 200, EV -0.3, 18mm focal length

Can't end a post without a little tip. You'll notice I used a small aperture of f/18 (remember the larger the f-number, the smaller the opening of the aperture), this was to make sure I'd have a large plane of focus or depth of field. Most good travel photos will use this technique. Another tip, when shooting in bright Florida sunshine, use fill flash. I didn't here and it would have helped to fill in the dark shadows. Next time!

Have a Happy and Safe 4th of July holiday to everyone in the United States of America!

Photography is all about capturing the light. Shadows in a photo help to create depth. Together, light and shadow can create a three dimensional look. In the photo below, the light entering from the upper left is an example of sidelighting. The shadows frame and mold Leota's face especially her eyes. Did you notice those eyes? Read the caption below to learn about some Disney Imagineering fun.

Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/60s, f/9, ISO 200, EV +0.3, 200mm focal length

Tombstone which honors the late Walt Disney Imagineer Leota Thomas as seen in the Haunted Mansion's graveyard in the Magic Kingdom, Walt Disney World, Orlando, Florida. Every few minutes, Loeta's eyes open and look around as shown in this photograph.

In my recent article on Using a Tripod at Walt Disney World, I talked about the advantages of using a tripod over trying to hand hold a camera when light levels are low like at night. This week I want to show you by comparing two photographs of the same subject using both techiques.

I carefully chose the subject and took the photos from the same location. For the first photo of Fulton's Crab House Restaurant in Downtown Disney's Marketplace, I steadied myself as best I could against a railing and used Joe McNally's Da Grip with an image stablized (IS) lens. Nikon calls theirs vibration reduction (VR) lenses. To get a proper exposure, I had to increase the ISO to 1600 and use an aperture of f/5.3 to get a shutter speed of 1/13th of a second. This is quite hard to hand held and I took a series of shots with this one being the best.

Fulton's Crab House taken Hand Held.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/13s, f/5.3, ISO 1600, EV +0.3, 80mm focal length

I do like this photo. The reflection of the lights in the water ripples and the lights and signs of the restaurant are nice but it's dreary for lack of a better word. It doesn't reach out and grab my attention.

In the second photo where a tripod was used, I was able to set the ISO at 200 for less noise and an aperture of f/22 which gave the lights a nice star effect. The shutter speed climbed to 30 seconds which allowed more light to hit the sensor. You can see more definition in the outside lighting and you can see more of the inside lighting. The long exposure smooths out the water ripples and reflections so they are not as pronounced but I find it a very pleasing result. This photo does grab my attention. What do you think?

Fulton's Crab House taken using a Tripod.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 30s, f/22, ISO 200, EV +1.0, 82mm focal length

Hollywood Studios Entrance.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 30s, f/16, ISO 200, +0.3 EV, 170mm Focal length, Tripod

I have never carried a tripod into a Walt Disney World park until my last trip. I thought it would be too much trouble and a bother. However, if you plan ahead, it can be done without too much disruption to your family's enjoyment. First, you have to consider how to carry the tripod the times you decide to bring one. For me it started with the choice of tripod. I didn't want one too heavy or big and easy to carry. I settled on a Manfrotto 725B Digi Tripod with Integrated Ball Head and Carrying Bag which is all those things and cost about $135. This tripod has since been replaced by the Manfrotto 7302YB M-Y Tripod and still comes with a ball head and carrying bag at around the same price. The carrying bag allowed me to carry the tripod over my shoulder comfortably. Now, don't get me wrong, I would not carry the tripod all day long. The main reason for using a tripod at Walt Disney World is for long exposure photography in the early mornings, evenings and fireworks.

On the days I planned to use a tripod, I would rent a locker at the parks. The tripod fit easily in a LARGE locker (see photo) so make sure you ask for one of this size. It was also handy to store sweatshirts or sweaters if you are visiting when the nights cool down. This let me go on rides and attractions without having to deal with the bulkiness of a tripod. The lockers are located near the front entrances to the parks so be aware of how long it will take to retrieve the tripod. I tried to plan to be near the front of the park about an hour before sunset. That gave me more than enough time to get to the locations I had in mind.

So, what are the advantages of a tripod besides being able to shoot at long exposures. It lets you use low ISO setting which means less noise and better clarity to your photos. All of my tripod photos were taken at my camera's lowest ISO setting of 200. Tripods, used correctly, give your camera a rock steady platform with no shake. To insure as little or no camera movement as possible use a remote shutter release or your camera's self-timer. Some people even go so far as locking up the mirror (see your camera's manual on how to do this).

Temple of Heaven in the China pavilion at dusk.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 8s, f/8, ISO 200, +0.3 EV, 18mm Focal length, Tripod

I keep mentioning how I planned to use a tripod and to be at a certain place. Think of it as an extension of your normal planning process and make sure your family is involved so they know what you want to do and expect. For fireworks, your family will probably want to be with you. Other times, they may want to explore while you are waiting through 10, 20, 30 second or longer exposures. It pays to research locations. In previous visits, I would try and take a night photo which just wouldn't work hand-held so I would make a mental note. flickr is a great place to find locations as there are many photographers who specialize in Disney themepark photography.

Sometimes you might just come upon them as you walk around. On a previous trip, I walked the trail between Disney's Hollywood Studios and the Epcot resort area late at night. I looked over the canal to the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror all lit up in very moody colors fitting the theme of the ride and knew I would need to come back with a tripod which I finally did.

Twilight Zone Tower of Terror at night from the walking trail to the Epcot resort area.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 30s, f/11, ISO 200, +0.3 EV, 130mm Focal length, Tripod

This was taken late at night which is another way to capture unique night time photos at Walt Disney World when the parks are close to being empty of visitors and there's a chance the water around and in the parks is calm. I had such a night during my last visit and was able to get mirrored images around the Epcot resort area like in this photo of the Swan Resort.

The Swan Resort mirrored in the canal the Friendship boats use during the day.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 30s, f/11, ISO 200, +0.3 EV, 18mm Focal length, Tripod

Using a tripod at Walt Disney World does take some effort and advanced planning but the rewards of capturing photos you could never get without one is worth it. Will I always take a tripod to a Disney park now? That will depend on what I have planned and who will be accompanying me but I will never think of it as a burden. Tripods open up far more opportunities when the Sun goes down.

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This is a follow up to Lisa's excellent Quick Tips for Quick Portraits article where she showed how to create a portrait of AllEars.net founder, Deb Wills. The only thing I wish to add is many times we are taking these photos in bright Florida sun or in the shade where our favorite Disney characters like to hang out. When faced with those kind of conditions, I like to add fill light using either a flash unit or on-board camera flash (if the camera has it).

Unlike Lisa, I could not move the statuette of Dumbo and Timothy in the Hub area in front of Cinderella Castle where I had my subject pose for her portrait. This meant I needed to add light to "fill" in the shadows caused by the bright afternoon sun. Like Lisa suggests, I found a good background and, by kneeling down, I found an angle which kept out fellow vacationers, too.

A Disney Portrait in the Magic Kingdom.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/250s, f/16, ISO 200, EV +0.3, 27mm focal length

You can see the flash in my subject's sunglasses. If she had not been wearing them, she probably would have been badly squinting so I didn't ask her to remove them. I could remove the hot spot via software if I wanted to.

Fill Flash is one of the secrets of the Disney Photopass photographers. If you watch them, you'll notice they always use fill flash during the day. Check your camera and/or flash manual to see how to set it/them for fill flash. It's sometimes called balanced fill flash.

Last year I went in-depth and explained the three different metering modes found on our digital SLR and advanced point and shoot cameras. These are Matrix, Center-weighted and Spot. At the time, I used some un-Disney like photos to show the difference between each mode. I thought a side by side comparison would be helpful as a review.

The three photos below were taken from Sea Breeze Point near Disney's Boardwalk Resort shows the three different metering modes in action.

Metering mode collage from Sea Breeze Point near Disney's Boardwalk Resort.

As I have mention in previous posts, Matrix metering in today's digital cameras is very good except in the most challenging of lighting situations like stage lights, backlighting and very low light conditions (dark rides). When faced with one of the challenging conditions, I will use Spot metering over the other two like in the photo from the Festival of the Lion King.

Festival of the Lion King performer in Disney's Animal Kingdom.
Nikon D70/70-200VR, 1/125s, f/2.8, ISO 800, EV 0, 200mm Focal length

Hyperfocus is a term you may run across when reading about photography. It is a one word term to say everything in a photograph is in sharp focus from front to back. You see hyperfocal photos on the covers of travel magazines where a tropical beach is featured and everything is in focus from the people on the beach to the far away mountains. It is an easy technique to learn. In the "old" days of manual focus lenses, you had a distance scale where one of the settings was the infinity symbol. You set your focus to infinity at certain apertures and, even if it looked out of focus through the viewfinder, everything would be in focus once you got the film back.

These days, most lens manufacturers have done away with the distance scale and letting the camera do the work. For point and shooters, set to landscape mode which is the hyperfocus setting. For digital SLR users, it's a bit more complicated. The easiest way, is to put your camera into Aperture priority mode and use an aperture of f/16, f/22 or smaller. Then focus on a point about one third (1/3) into the scene you are photographing. The photo below of some Streetmosphere performers on Sunset Blvd. in Disney's Hollywood Studios is a good example of where to focus. Citizen of Hollywood Ready Freddy Fiddlesticks is about 1/3 into the scene of him and his fellow performers, the audience and the backdrop of Sunset Blvd. with the Hollywood Tower Hotel off in the distance.

Streetmosphere performers Ready Freddy Fiddlesticks, Cloe Canard (big hat) and Tallulah Fruiti (blue dress) on Sunset Blvd. in Disney's Hollywood Studios.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/200s, f/18, ISO 200, EV +0.3, 18mm Focal length

Citizens of Hollywood are the troup of cast members in Disney's Hollywood Studios known as Streetmosphere. Here at the Picture This! Photoblog, Streetmosphere is a popular subject. Lisa talked about how the "shows" are put together, I featured them in a Pic of the Week and Barrie used a piece of a Streetmosphere performer's costume in one of her "Where in the World" contests. AllEars.net recently updated the Streetmosphere information with more photos which identify some of the popular Citizens of Hollywood.

There are lots of concerts held at Walt Disney World each day so knowing how to photograph one is a good skill to have. To show you how I do it, I selected the new American Idol Experience at Disney's Hollywood Studios. While concerts, unlike shows, are more spontaneous, the American Idol Experience does follow a script of sorts. That makes it a good place to learn this kind of event photography.

First, let's look at a couple of photos I took of the performers. Look closely at how they are lighted by the show's director and crew.

Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/125s, f/5, ISO 360, EV +0.0, 70mm Focal length

American Idol Experience contestants performing under stage lights.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/100s, f/5.6, ISO 1600, EV +0.0, 170mm Focal length

When dealing with stage lighting like this it is very important to make sure you properly expose the performer and let the other parts of the stage lighting fall where it may. To do this, I used something I have talked about before: Spot Metering. Using spot metering, I could get exposures right off the performers skin. This tends to make a lot of the background dark which is what the show's director wants us to see so it works out.

Spot metering worked even on the judges as the lighting was directly on them. Randy, Paula and Simon's stand-ins looked pretty good and entertained us with their words of wisdom about each contestant's performance.

American Idol Experience Judges commenting on a performance.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/60s, f/5.6, ISO 1600, EV -0.3, 130mm Focal length

When pulling back to take in most of the stage, I switched back to Matrix Metering (see the Spot Metering link for more about Matrix Metering) so the camera would give an overall exposure to balance out all the mixed lighting in the theater. Today's digital cameras do an excellent job most of the time with matrix metering. Notice how the camera can not capture the entire range from light to dark as the audience looks a bit underexposed. Something that can be fixed in a photo editor.

American Idol Experience contestant listening to the judges under full stage lighting.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/125s, f/3.5, ISO 720, EV -0.3, 18mm Focal length

Lastly, during audience preparation and when announcing the winner of the show, the entire stage has very even and bright lighting. I, again, used Matrix metering which resulted in a good photo of the winner of the show being interviewed by the Ryan Seacrest-like host.

An American Idol Experience winner being interviewed by the host.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/125s, f/5.6, ISO 500, EV -0.3, 200mm Focal length

As you can see, to get the best photos during a concert or live show at Walt Disney World or any venue, you have to be aware of the kind of lighting being used at all times. For each of the three performers, the American Idol Experience director choose different lighting schemes to set the mood of the song they were singing.

Have any questions? Leave a Comment below (link on far right).

Reference Link: How To Photograph Rock Concerts

Timing is everything. To the performers in the various Disney live shows, everything must be rehearsed and the timing of each minute has to be perfected. For us guests, who may have never seen a show like Dream Along with Mickey which is performed several times a day in the Magic Kingdom in front of Cinderella Castle, these shows can be a challenge to photograph. We don't know when things will happen. That is unless you see the shows over and over which I have over the last few visits. Which is why I knew the finale had three firework events. First, fireworks go off on stage right, then stage left and then....

Dream Along with Mickey fireworks finale in front of Cinderella Castle.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/80s, f/22, ISO 200, EV +0.3, 18mm Focal length

This is one of my favorites from the last trip. It took three trips to get it but I got it! Knowing the show also allowed me to be prepared for Maleficent's grand entrance during the Dream Along with Mickey stage show.

Maleficent makes her grand entrance during the Dream Along with Mickey stage show.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/400s, f/13, ISO 200, EV +0.3, 200mm Focal length

I know what you're thinking. Do I have to go several times to Walt Disney World before I am able to capture moments like these? A few years ago, I would have told you yes. Today, however, we have the Internet and youTube (you know the link) where people have posted videos of shows at the Disney parks. By watching them, you can get an idea of when things happen and when your favorite character or characters appear or does something you want to photograph. Have fun researching for your next trip!

Do you have a zoom lens for your digital SLR? Most people do as they tend to be purchased as a kit and the lens in the kit is usually a zoom lens either in the 18-55mm or 55-200mm range. Maybe you got both or have one with a different range.

Besides the advantage of having a variable range of focal lengths, zoom lenses can be a lot of fun in creating the Zoom Effect. The best way to do the Zoom Effect is to use a tripod and set your camera in Aperture priority mode. You want to set the aperture to give a long shutter speed. Something like f/16, f/22 or f/32 if your lens goes out that far and starting at the smallest focal length of the lens.

In the example below, I took a photo of the Rainforest Cafe in Downtown Disney's Marketplace. This photo was taken at 1 second shutter speed, an aperture of f/16 and ISO of 200 at a focal length of 110mm using my Nikon 18-200mm VR lens.

Rainforest Cafe sign in Downtown Disney.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1s, f/16, 200 ISO, 100mm Focal length

Here's where the fun comes in. On this next shot, I set the aperture at f/32 which gave me a shutter speed of 3 seconds. Starting at a focal length of 18mm, I tripped the shutter and quickly and smoothly zoomed the lens out while the shutter was open. By the time the shutter closed, I had zoomed out to a focal length of 135mm. The results as you can see, give a great effect of the sign jumping right out at you.

Rainforest Cafe sign zoomed in at Downtown Disney.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 3s, f/32, 200 ISO, 18 to 135mm Focal length

Pretty neat, eh? The Exif data will only show the final focal length when the shutter closes but I knew where I started from. You can also start at the long end of the zoom lens and zoom to a lower one. I'll leave that to you as an exercise. Leave a comment below if you want to share your results.

I have found it best to keep your subject simple when doing this. Too many subjects and it gets hard to tell what you are taking a picture of. This is great to do in low light and especially with artificial lights like the sign I used above. The link above will give you more tips and ideas on how to use the Zoom Effect.

The technique of panning to convey a sense of motion is one that takes practice. Instead of worrying about depth of field as you would for a landscape or a portrait, slow shutter speeds and steady hands are what is needed to get a good panned photo. For unlike most photography, panning means you move your camera instead of keeping it still. Walt Disney World is full of opportunities for panning images. Rides, running children, shows, parades, moving parts of attractions, transportation vehicles and most anything which moves in and around the parks and resorts.

The diagram shown here gives the setup for taking a panning photo. In the diagram, the subject is moving from left to right. The subject could be moving in the other direction or up or down. As long as you can follow it evenly throughout the time it takes to capture the image. How fast and how close the moving subject is will determine the shutter speed to use. I start at 1/60th of a second for people sporting events. For auto racing events, I use 1/125 which often freezes the cars but shows movement in the wheels. For your son or daughter on a bicycle, 1/30 or slower may be in order. I've even experimented at 1/15, 1/8 and as low as 1/4 of a second.

The slower the shutter speed, the more pronounced the sense of movement and the harder it will be to keep your camera steady. Using an image stabilized (IS) lens can help. Most of today's IS lenses detect a panning motion. Nikon's version of IS called vibration reduction or VR for short, is what was used in the example photos for this article.

You still need to do the following to give yourself the best possible panning results. Plant your feet, tuck your arms into your body, hold the camera firmly and rotate the top half of your body as you track your subject. You want to pan as fast as the subject moves keeping it in the same position in your viewfinder as much as possible. Press the shutter down as you continue your motion and follow through even after the shutter has closed. You can use continuous shooting modes if you have time for more than one exposure.

Watching the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad trains from the observation area, I put my panning skills to the test. Of the many photos I took, this was the best one. Be prepared for a low percentage of images you'll find acceptable when trying this technique. Panning at places with lots of opportunities, like a themepark ride, will give you a better chance of getting a few good panned photos.

Panning for Gold on Big Thunder Mountain.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/50s, f/22, ISO 200, -0.6 EV, 95mm Focal length

Next I went over to the Tomorrowland Indy Speedway. Can you tell how fast this car is going? Tomorrowland Indy cars can only reach a maximum speed of 7.5 mph. If this photo looks familiar I used it for the Disney Pic of the Week on Motion a couple of weeks back.

Panning shows how fast 7.5 miles per hour can look.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/20s, f/18, ISO 200, 0 EV, 95mm Focal length

Panning is a worthwhile technique to learn. All you need is to find a place to practice. A local park where people like to roller blade or bicycle is ideal. I went to a local drag strip and, after a couple of visits, became very comfortable with panning the cars going down the quarter mile strip of asphalt. You'll have to take a lot of photos to get a few great panning ones but the results are often stunning and grab a viewer's attention right away.

Next week I'll be at Walt Disney World and will be taking a break from blogging. If you have any questions regarding photography at Walt Disney World, leave a comment and I'll try and cover some of them when I get back. Aloha!

NOTE: Comments have now been activated for the Picture This! blog. The comments will appear at the bottom of our posts and Barrie, Lisa and myself would like to encourage you to ask questions and leave comments by clicking the link below each post. Thank you and we hope this will further increase your enjoyment of the AllEars.net Picture This! blog. The Comment link to use is the one on the far right with a number in parenthesis.

Let's see, I introduced Restaurants, Merchandise and now Shops for the Disney Pic of the Week. I'm sensing another kind of theme myself here. Barrie? Lisa? Care to comment? Well, since I used the Epcot Pin Station for Merchandise, I'll stay in Epcot with a photo of the neon lighted MouseGear store which is the second largest shop on Walt Disney World property.

MouseGear is located in Epcot's Innoventions East.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/15s, f/4.2, 900 ISO, +0.3 EV, 29mm Focal Length

Barrie and Lisa will be showing you their favorite Shops at Disney this Thursday and Saturday.

Symmetry in it's purest sense is an object which, if cut directly down the middle, would be mirror images of each other. It's one of the ways to break the Rule of Thirds correctly. Hope that doesn't confuse you. It's easy to find a symmetrical object but the images I've chosen to show you here are symmetrical but not mirror images. They are close enough to show you how to use symmetry in your photography.

The first is of the Swan Resort taken from a room in the Dolphin Resort. Like a lot of buildings, the Swan, itself, is symmetrical as is the landscaping and walkways leading up to and away from it. I think the surrounding foreground and background of the buildings and the Friendship boat dock add to the photo.

Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/250s, f/8, ISO 200, EV 0, 20mm Focal length

The next one is from the Pop Century resort. The large Mickey Mouse phone is symmetrically placed between the resort buildings and the Fooseball men. This is not close to being perfectly symmetrical, yet a pleasing composition with the main subject in the center of the photo.

Nikon D70/18-70D, 1/320s, f/9, ISO 200, EV +0.3, 18mm Focal length

The last example was taken during the 2007 Epcot International Flower & Garden Festival. The Prince and Cinderella topiary was placed in the center of a sea of flowers flanked by trimmed flowering and green bushes and trees.

Nikon D70/18-2000VR, 1/160s, f/11, ISO 200, EV -0.3, 18mm Focal length

When taking these photographs, I kept telling myself I was breaking a photography "rule". That is the something I want you to take away from this article. It's okay to break rules in photography when it works (as in the above photos) and you know you are doing it. Just putting something in the middle of your viewfinder does not make it symmetrical.

Racing along Tomorrowland Indy Speedway.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/20s, f/18, 200 ISO, 0 EV, 95mm Focal Length

Racing along Tomorrowland Indy Speedway in the Magic Kingdom, this young driver is taking his Mom for the ride of her life. Can you tell how fast this car is going? Tomorrowland Indy cars can only reach a maximum speed of 7.5 mph.

To blur the background but still keep the car and occupants sharp, I panned the camera and is great way to show this week's Disney Pic of the Week on Motion. I'll be going into more detail on how to use panning to show motion in an upcoming blog entry.

I have my camera set up to enhance colors. Most of the time it captures what I want and gives me bright, vibrant colors. Then there are those times the photos have a color cast to them I don't like. Take for instance the photo I took at Beaches and Cream of Cast Member Kristen serving me up a delicious cheeseburger and fries. The original photo on the left has a warm yellowish color cast to it. Really not fitting for the brightly colored restaurant or Kristen's skin tones.

In most photo editing software, you'll find a way to fix the white balance or the color of light in a photo. See your software's manual for specific instructions. In Apple's Aperture 2 software, which I use, there is an eye-dropper white balance tool which I can select and drag to something in the photo I know is white and click. The software will then take the color information from the spot I clicked on and adjust the rest of the photo's white balance.

In this photo, I used the Walt Disney World napkin you see towards the bottom of the frame. The photo on the right has been white balanced adjusted using the eye-dropper technique. The colors are now more true to life, especially Kristen's skin color. The white colors have lost the yellowish hue as seen in the Before photo. The photo still needs a few more adjustments but this was the biggest one and made much easier by using Aperture's white balance eye-dropper tool.

Auto White Balance Adjustment.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/30s, f/3.5, ISO 450, EV +0.3, 18mm focal length

Beaches and Cream is an old fashioned soda fountain tucked away at the Beach Club resort. Beaches and Cream is just few minutes walk or short boat ride from Epcot's International Gateway. It serves, in my opinion, the best burgers at Walt Disney World and is home to the Kitchen Sink dessert with 24 scoops of ice cream and every topping they have. It's a small dining venue and does not take reservations. For the least amount of wait time, try to get there for an early or late lunch or early dinner. Beaches and Cream is mobbed after an Illuminations performance as it also has ice cream counter service.

Before taking a closer look at the photo below. I would like you to review a couple of past Picture This! articles. The first is Barrie talking about Leading Lines. Isn't that a great photo? The second article is the one I did on the Rule of Thirds. Off Kilter is one of my favorite entertainers at Walt Disney World and are fun to photograph.

For the photo below of the Yacht Club Resort, I had my back to the lighthouse you see in Barrie's photo. As you can see I used her tip on leading lines. I know what you are thinking, unlike Barrie's photo, I have the dock right in the center of the frame. Could I be breaking the Rule of Thirds I urged you to use in my article? If you follow the dock to the resort notice the roof line of the Yacht Club. Yes, it's about 1/3 down from the top of the frame and makes for a nice balanced photo. I'm sure after a long day at the parks, this is a welcome sight for returning guests.

Dock leading to the Yacht Club Resort.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 25s, f/22, 200 ISO, 0 EV, 18mm Focal length, Tripod

Don't be afraid to experiment with your compositions. Either when you are taking photos or by cropping in post-processing.

In 1998, a wannabe wildlife photographer’s dream came true when Disney’s Animal Kingdom opened. I've always wanted to bring a super zoom telephoto lens to this park and I did just that during Mousefest 2008. There were three specific locations at Animal Kingdom I wanted to try my super zoom lens, Nikon's 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6D ED Autofocus VR Zoom Nikkor Lens, on. They were the Kilimanjaro Safari, Pangani Forest Exploration Trail and Maharajah Jungle Trek.

Kilimanjaro Safari is a ride on large vehicles, called jeeps, which are designed to give a very bumpy ride. In the past, I’ve used 200mm zoom lenses with much success. The Nikon 80-400VR is much heavier at 3 pounds than those shorter lenses. I was a little worried about being able to steady it even with Nikon’s Vibration Reduction (VR) technology. This proved to be a problem and, when the ride vehicle was in motion, I found it nearly impossible to get any non-blurred photos at 400mm.

I was more successful using lesser focal lengths like with this lumbering White Rhino taken at the shortest focal length of the lens at 80mm.

A White Rhino lumbers past a safari jeep on the Kilimanjaro Safari.
Nikon D70/80-400VR, 1/400s, f/4.5, 560 ISO, -0.3 EV, 80mm Focal Length

The lens did allow me to get a photo I’ve never been able to get on all my previous safari trips. The Cheetahs are very far from the road the safari jeeps use and, being cats, are either not in view or lying down sleeping. On this day, they were in full view and posing! Using the lens at its full 400mm focal length (which is 600mm on my Nikon D70 1.5x cropped body), I was able to get the following photo which has been further cropped from the original.

Pair of Cheetahs seen on the Kilimanjaro Safari adventure.
Nikon D70/80-400VR, 1/400s, f/5.6, 1600 ISO, -0.3 EV, 400mm Focal Length

The Pangani Forest Exploration Trail is a walking trail featuring African wildlife from Naked Mole Rats to the mighty Silverback Gorillas. One of the highlights for me on the trail is the colony of Meerkats. Like North America’s Prairie Dogs, Meerkats have a sentinel member keeping watch of the surroundings when other members are out of their protective burrows. This Meerkat portrait shows the nice bokeh (out of focus background) of the Nikon 80-400VR lens shooting wide open at f/5.6 and 400mm focal length.

Meerkat sentinel on the Pangani Forest Exploration Trail.
Nikon D70/80-400VR, 1/400s, f/5.6, 200 ISO, +0.3 EV, 400mm Focal Length

The trail features a family troop of gorillas in a large compound with great viewing locations for people to see and photograph these magnificent animals. Here is a picture of the leader who reminds me of the gorilla, Kerchak, in Disney’s Tarzan animated movie. Normally, I would discard a photo like this but his eyes make this one a keeper.

Male Gorilla on the Pangani Forest Exploration Trail.
Nikon D70/80-400VR, 1/400s, f/5.6, 1000 ISO, +0.3 EV, 400mm Focal Length

Another walking trail, the Maharajah Jungle Trek features wildlife from the continent of Asia. I was fortunate to catch the Komodo Dragon alert and the Nikon 80-400VR gave me the reach to capture this portrait of a species you wouldn’t want to be this close to in the wild.

Portrait of the Komodo Dragon on the Maharajah Jungle Trek.
Nikon D70/80-400VR, 1/400s, f/5.6, 1000 ISO, -0.3 EV, 400mm Focal Length

The Asian Tigers are in a compound themed as ruins of a jungle palace. The residents act as royalty often lounging and sleeping as big cats often do. I try to be there in the late afternoon when they are more likely to be active as they are feed about a half hour before park closing. I have gotten many sleeping and resting tiger photos in the past so I was thrilled to get a few on this trip as they moved about their lair.

Asian Tiger on the prowl as seen from the Maharajah Jungle Trek.
Nikon D70/80-400VR, 1/640s, f/5.3, 200 ISO, -0.3 EV, 200mm Focal Length

After the Maharajah Jungle Trek, I was ready to put the large 80-400VR lens back into my camera bag. I got some great photos I would not have been able to get with shorter lenses. Though it is not something I think I'd take to Animal Kingdom again in the near future unless I have a need to get some really close up photos of animals I can't find elsewhere.

For more on Animal Kingdom photography, check out my previous articles on Kilimanjaro Safari Photo Tips and Maharajah Jungle Trek Photo Tips.

Another year, another Black Friday is almost upon us. I'd like to add to the list I started last year giving you some more ideas for gift giving if you own or know somebody who does own, a digital SLR camera.

More Great Photography Books

Bryan Peterson is back this year with a follow up book to his very popular Understanding Exposure, called Understanding Shutter Speed: Creative Action and Low-Light Photography Beyond 1/125 Second. It picks up where Understanding Exposure left off about how to best use shutter speeds in photography. The tandom together will quickly get you "up to speed" in learning photography.

Scott Kelby released Volume 2 of his Digital Photography Book series earlier this year. I call it a series now as he has announced there will be a Volume 3 coming out sometime in 2009. The Digital Photography Book, Volume 2, delves more into the use of flash in digital photography de-mystifying a subject many try to avoid. Volume 2 revisits Travel, Wedding, Landscapes and Portrait photography in Kelby's unique, one page = one topic format. If you need to know something fast, The Digital Photography Books are excellent learning references.

I reviewed one of this year's best selling photography books last Spring, Joe McNally's The Moment It Clicks has been on Amazon's top seller list the moment it was listed. If you are interested in how this working pro did his magic over the last 20 some odd years, you'll find this book a real treat.

More Great Photography Stuff

Last year I glanced over external hard drives. The newest dSLR cameras being brought out today produce larger image files than ever before. The best way I have found to handle this was to purchase extra storage space. Since I use a laptop, I opted for an external hard drive by Western Digital called a MyBook. They come in various sizes at excellent prices. Last year I bought a 500GB (Gigabyte) version which worked perfectly with my Apple laptop. This year I'd recommend the 1TB (1 Terabyte= 1,000 Gigabytes) MyBook for less than $200.

You know I've raved about my Nikon 18-200VR lens here in the past. This year, Canon released their version called the Canon EF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 IS Standard Zoom Lens. If you are looking to lighten your camera bag when you travel, these two lenses will fit the bill for Nikon and Canon dSLR owners.

A great lens to have in your bag is what's called a "Nifty-Fifty". A Nifty-Fifty is a 50mm fast prime lens with apertures opening up to f/1.8 and cost around $100 or less. Here are links for Nikon and Canon versions. These are great lenses to use in low light and night photography as well as in dark rides where flash photography is not allowed. Being a prime lens, they tend to be much sharper than zoom lenses.

Speaking of bags and other photographic accessories, Barrie, Lisa and I have listed some of our favorites in the All Ear's Amazon store.

Hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving but get some rest to hit up the stores and malls early on Black Friday!

Ready for Christmas yet? Shopping all done? Gifts wrapped? Yeah, me neither. Here is something you can start doing at Walt Disney World today. Taking pictures of the fabulous Christmas decorations in the themeparks and resorts. With more coming by the end of November with the Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights at Disney's Hollywood Studios, Christmas parades and special events held all through the holiday season.

How best to capture the millions of lights Disney Imagineers use is our topic for today and I have a some tips for you. Let's start with something people often overlook as it gets dark so early in November and December. Take photos of lighting displays during the magic hour after sunset when the sky and lights become balanced. Though it's not a Christmas display, the photo of the Planet Hollywood sign demonstrates what I am talking about here. I used AWB (Automatic White Balance) here while others will say to switch to a Tungsten or Incandescent white balance for best results. A tripod would be useful but I get good results shooting down to a quarter second (1/4s) with image stabilized lenses. The key is to wait for the sky and lights to come together. Keep taking shots until you start to see the results you are looking for. The provided link will go into more detail.

Now you are saying to yourself, who has time to wait for the light at Disney besides it's mostly full night when you are there. The lights are so pretty, there's got to be a way to photograph them. Well, you are right. Below is a technique you can use called "Dragging the Shutter". This technique is used a lot in wedding photography to allow for room lighting to be seen instead of stark dark backgrounds in large banquet halls.

Nikon D70/18-70D, 1/30s, f/4.5, ISO 400, +0.6 EV, 46mm Focal length

On camera and external flash are normally synced at shutter speeds between 1/60 and 1/250 of a second. When you use a flash and purposely use shutter speeds below the normal flash sync speed, it allows more time for ambient light to be captured by the camera's sensor. This gives a more pleasing and natural look to the photograph as you see on the right hand photo of the Donald Duck topiary I took at Epcot during Mousefest 2006. Both photos were taken the same way except for the use of flash. This can also be called Slow Sync in your camera manuals.

Using flash for photos of large areas is not practical. For best results, we have to use long shutter speeds (of less than 1/60th of a second), high ISO speeds of 800 or greater and find a way to stabilize our cameras. In the photo of Main Street USA, I was able to do all three.

Magic Kingdom's Main Street USA all decked out for Christmas.
Nikon D70/18-70D, 1/20s, f/4.2, ISO 1600, +0.3 EV, 35mm Focal length

As you can see, I am using a very high ISO of 1600 (my camera's highest available), a shutter speed of 1/20 of a second and I stabilized the camera by leaning against a garbage can and using my elbows to form a human tripod. I took several images to make sure I had a few which would come out sharp. If I had a real tripod, I could have used even slower shutter speeds and smaller apertures but I'll leave that discussion for another time.

By using these tips both at Disney or at home, your Christmas light photography will make your friends and family envious of your talents. Click this link for more tips on capturing the spirit of Christmas photographically. That's my gift to all of you!

Over the years, some general rules of thumb have been applied to photography. We've talked about the Rule of Thirds in the past. The Sunny 16 Rule gives you the best results when used on a bright sunny day. I know that's silly of me to state it but I wanted to be absolutely clear on the sunny part. Luckily for us, Orlando averages 233 sunny days per year (SOURCE).

Here is the rule: Set aperture to f/16 and shutter speed (in reciprocal seconds) to the ISO setting.

You will need to switch to manual mode to use this rule correctly. Something this rule fails to mention is the sun position. The sun should be behind you and frontlight your subject. The photograph I took below of the Haunted Mansion in the Magic Kingdom on a bright, sunny day uses the Sunny 16 Rule. I put my Nikon D70 in manual mode, checked the ISO setting which was at 200 and set my aperture to f/16 and shutter speed to 1/200th of a second (1/ISO).

The Haunted Mansion in bright sun.
Nikon D70/80-200D, 1/200s, f/16, 200 ISO, 155mm Focal length

Sometimes, the 1/ISO comes out with a funny shutter speed. In that case, use the closest one to it. Digital SLRs and advanced Point and Shoot cameras have more shutter speeds than the old film cameras the Sunny 16 Rule was first used with. Making it much easier to match up the 1/ISO with a shutter speed.

I recently read a wonderful book on travel photography. Since most of us travel to Walt Disney World, I found lots of great information which can be used there, elsewhere and at home. It talks about finding the spirit of where you are. This is how I approached all my photography before I even knew this was how many others also described their vision. The book, Spirit of Place: The Art of the Traveling Photographer, was written by Bob Krist, who's a contributing editor at both National Geographic Traveler and Outdoor Photographer, back in 2000. The year it was written is important as digital photography was in it's infancy then. Most of the equipment he talks about in the book is still SLR equipment but is not digital. However, it all has equivalents to today's digital SLR and advanced Point and Shoot world of today. Digital photography has come a long way in just 8 short years. So, keep that in mind if you decide to read the book.

The first part of the book goes in depth as to the equipment Bob uses, composition of a good travel photograph and how to get the best technical photo possible. Very good for a beginning photographer and an excellent review for those who have been shooting for awhile. All this information is geared towards a working travel photographer which we all are when visiting Walt Disney World with our cameras. Right?

The part I most enjoyed was Bob giving tips on how to photograph people all over the world. Walt Disney World is unique in you can do that all in one day at Epcot. It's a bit easier in WDW but still takes a little effort to ask non-character cast members for their picture. If you are traveling without children, remember characters will pose for your camera, too. I have seen many great character portraits on message forums and photo sharing sites like flickr.

Bob talks about how to capture the essence of a city. Written before the advent of Yahoo or Google, it is much easier today to research a location then his advice. No need to write to a travel bureau when you can "google" it in seconds on our computers. Still, what to look for is very relevant and Bob tells you the best kind of things like festivals, parades, holidays, historical events and other cultural happenings. Researching a trip to Walt Disney World is the same. When you go, there are different things going on depending on the time of year and you need to know what they are and when they happen. One advantage for us is there's usually a schedule online for us to find out these things.

There's even a chapter on photographing in the tropics. Great tips on how to get good photographs even at midday on a bright, sandy beach. While he is referring to Caribbean Islands, central Florida poses the same challenges.

Throughout the book, Bob goes over how to create stories with photographs. Many of us do produce these in trip reports to our friends, family and Internet communities. Bob shows how to do it like an editor would. Giving ideas and examples on how to wrap up all those hundreds of images into interesting essays using all the techniques and equipment he introduces us to in each chapter.

The book is filled with Bob Krist's exquisite photographs taken on his many assignments for National Geographic Traveler, Outdoor Photographer, Smithsonian, Travel/Holiday and many other publications. Yes, the book is a little dated when it comes to the equipment he talks about but the rest is timeless information for us who enjoy photographing the places we travel to and live in.

How do I capture the spirit of Walt Disney World in a photograph? For me, Walt Disney's spirit lives on in the parks and some of it rubs off on all of us who visit. Of course, there are many kinds of spirits, below is one of magic. A man's vision of two dimensional characters brought to life and giving a family's children and their parents a gift in a photograph to cherish for the rest of their lives. You can find Donald and Daisy Duck (and other lovable Disney characters) on Mickey Avenue in front of their On-Location Hollywood Star trailers in Disney's Hollywood Studios.

The spirit of Walt Disney can been seen in the faces of these children posing for their parents with Donald and Daisy Duck.
Nikon Coolpix 995, 1/100s, f/3.6, ISO 100, EV 0

When I was talking about adding metadata and how to use it. I seemed to have confused some people about how much work it takes to add captions and keywords. While it does take time to add them, it's not as time consuming as it sounds. Photo management software like Apple's Aperture 2, Adobe's Lightroom 2 and others let you change metadata on more than one photograph at a time. This is called batch processing as you change a whole batch of photos at once.

To return to the example I was using. When loading or ingesting from a memory card onto my computer using Aperture 2, I give pretty general captions and keywords which cover all the photos. After I go through and edit the day's photos, discarding those I do not want, I'll add more keywords. Again, I'll use Space Ship Earth as my subject. I'll select all the Space Ship Earth photos I took and then open up a metadata window. Your program may call it something else like a tab. I click on the keyword field which already has the general keywords added earlier and add more of them. You have to use a comma to separate the keywords. Then press the Change or Update button to process the batch of selected photos with the additional keywords. The same can be done for any of the metadata fields available.

Partial view of Space Ship Earth.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/400s, f/10, 200 ISO, EV -0.6, 52mm Focal length

Adding keywords can be even easier. Applications like Apple's iPhoto pulls up all your defined keywords in a window and you can click on the ones you want to add to a photo or group of photos. It pays to research what your photography software can do when it comes to saving time while entering metadata information.

When shooting in low light or after dark at Walt Disney World, I have stressed the use of a tripod to get the best results. However, I understand it is not easy to do so when traveling to and at the parks.

If you have a digital SLR camera, I have another alternative for you called Da Grip. It's explained in this video by National Geographic photographer, Joe McNally, on how to hand hold a camera to get you one or two extra stops. I can usually hand hold my camera down to about 1/30th of a second with my lenses before I learned this technique. Now, I have successfully gotten good results down to 1/8th of a second which is two extra shutter stops as Joe explains in the video. On my next trip to WDW, I'll be putting this technique to the real test!

You might remember I reviewed Joe's book, The Moment it Clicks, earlier this year. The video is 7 1/2 minutes long.

After having figured out a photographic naming system, organized digital photographs on our computer systems, learned about metadata and some powerful software to manage our growing library of photos, it's now time to learn how to edit them. I'm not talking about editing like in Photoshop, I'm talking about selecting the best photos from a typical day of creating photos at a place like Walt Disney World or anytime you come back to your computer with a new batch of photographs.

This process is referred to as rating. Since rating your photos is a very personal thing, I am going to tell you how I approach it to give you some ideas on how you might. I have chosen to use the Star Rating system which many software products support. Simply put, photos are rated from Zero Stars to Five Stars. How you use those Stars is up to you.

When I get a batch of photos from the Magic Kingdom, as an example, onto my computer and start reviewing them, I only use One Star for photos I want to keep for further review. Any photos I don't give a Star to will be deleted. These Zero Star photos are easy to spot. They are technically bad (focus off, exposure too dark or too light, blurry from too slow a shutter speed, etc.), compositionally bad (no subject, subject too small or too big, unflattering people expressions, background too busy, etc.) or for some reason the photo just doesn't look good to me. Again, it's very subjective and personal. For family and vacation photos I am not as picky as I would be for a wedding or portrait work. The picture of my kids with Stitch might be a bit overexposed but it's the only one I got so I'll choose to keep it.

After discarding the Zero Star photos, I'll go back and see what's left. I'll be more keen on rating photos above One Star this time. A photo gets Two Stars if it's technically solid with focus on the subject and excellent exposure. Sometimes I will drop the Star if what I thought I saw the first time doesn't hold up. Three Stars is given to photos I feel are the best of the lot. These photos are technically solid (if not nearly perfect) and have a great subject. Most of the photos I publish here are Three Stars or better. Currently, I don't use Four Stars but maybe you do or will. Five Stars is for my computer wallpapers. They are all landscape in orientation and outstanding (in my opinion) photographs for my computer's desktop.

Below is an example of one of my Five Star photographs of the Liberty Belle Riverboat leaving dock with waving guests aboard and the Haunted Mansion in the background. The photo is nicely composed, very colorful, tack sharp focus and well exposed.

The Liberty Bell Riverboat sets off on it's trip down the Rivers of America.
Nikon D70/18-70G, 1/250s, f/11, 200 ISO, EV +0.3, 31mm Focal length

Star Ratings is just one way to rate your photographs. Others use colors and numbers. I first used a rating system using numbers from 1 to 10 but found that too much to keep track of in my head as to what was a 4 versus an 6 or 7. I found this useful link of a professional photographer and how he uses the Star Rating system.

What system do you use to rate your photographs? I would like to know and do a follow up article on what others have found works for them.

Before I go on talking about organizing our digital library of photographs, I want to introduce you to the new breed of software that were released a couple of years ago I refer to as digital darkroom programs. These programs assist you in organizing, editing and outputting (either files or prints) your digital photos in one place. You no longer need more than one program to do each of these tasks.

The two programs I want to talk about are Adobe Lightroom 2 (PC and Mac) and Apple Aperture 2 (Mac only). Now, I know there's a lot of discussion on which one to use in photography forums. I think both do a great job. If you have not looked at either of these programs, you can download free trials from Adobe and Apple.

What these programs do is import your photos from your camera or memory cards and place them into one image database. If you've been following this series, you know I put my photos into specific folders on my computer system depending on the year and month they were taken. Both of these programs will allow you to keep such a system and give you the freedom to create projects or collections within their image database or library as I like to call it. I use Aperture 2 and as an example I want to show you how I use Aperture's organizational power.

I set up a Project called Walt Disney World. Inside this project I have each of my trips in a folder labeled WDW_YYYYMM (so far I haven't stayed over a two month span yet but I would still separate the photos on my hard drive into separate folders). My last trip from May, 2008 is in folder WDW_200805 and has a few thousand photos. I have some albums in the WDW project I have set up for various reasons. One is called POTW (for the Picture This! Picture of the Week theme) where I have past and upcoming photos for the themes Lisa, Barrie and I have come up with. An album consists of photos I have moved into it. The photos are not actually in the album or folders but point back to the photo's location in the library. ONe photo can be in multiple projects, folders or albums. Luckily, I don't have to worry about where the photos files are as Aperture takes care of all that for me. I just drag and drop.

I can also search for a group of photos and this is where metadata comes in very handy. Let's say I want to create an album with just my photos of Epcot's Spaceship Earth. Since I have added the keywords, spacehip earth, to all my photos I have taken of this attraction, I can pull up a view of all of those photos easily by typing it into the search box. Once I have that view, I can create an album with a simple click of my mouse. If I had not added keywords, it would have taken me a long time to look through each of my WDW folders and pick out all the Spaceship Earth ones.

If you are looking to easily organize, process and print your digital photographs and have not looked at either Aperture or Lightroom, I think you will be very surprised at how versatile these programs are. Both have come out with second versions in the last few months with vast improvements over their first editions.

The last couple of entries we've gone over naming all the digital photos we take and organizing them on our computer systems. This is all done in preparation of creating a database or library of our images. Anytime you have a collection of data on a computer, as our image files are, they are refereed to as a database or library. If you are familiar with iTunes, you have an idea of what a library of music looks like. Photo files are the same as any other media files like music or videos.

To be able to organize and search my library beyond the dates I took them as that is part of the name I use for each photo, I add information to them called metatdata. When a picture is taken with a digital camera, the camera adds or embeds information beyond the image you see. That information is the Exif (Exchangeable Image File Format) data which includes the technical data like date, time, camera make and model, shutter speed, aperture, ISO, EV, white balance used, and lots of other things. Very important but what it doesn't have is a description of the photo, why it was taken, who or what is in the photo, where was it taken, and who took it to name a few questions that come to mind when I see a photograph.

This is where metadata comes in and over the years a standard has been developed by the International Press Telecommunications Council, or IPTC for short, called the Information Interchange Model (IIM) which has allowed software publishers to write programs where you and I can add information to our photos and it will be able to be read by the software we use today and in the future. This information can also be used by online photo sites like flickr so when you upload your images, metadata information will go with them.

So, what kind of information do you put in metadata? The entire IPTC standard has way more fields then you or I will ever use. The most important ones for me are captions, keywords, and copyright. When I load my photos onto my computer, I have the software I use do several things. It renames the files the way I want them, puts them in the monthly folder and adds the metadata I enter into the caption, keyword and copyright fields. The captions I use when loading are very simple. I give the basic Who or What, Where, and When of the day's photos. I can later add and or edit the captions to give more or less information. The copyright is very important as this stamps the photo as created by me, the photographer.

Keywords are used by photo software programs to find photos quickly. Google uses keywords people embed in their web pages for fast seaching and it works the same way with our photos. Here's an example, every photo I take at Epcot in Walt Disney World has the keywords: Walt Disney World and Epcot. This makes it easy for me to find all my photos taken at Epcot. The more keywords used, the easier it is to find a particular set of photos or even an individual photo in a library of thousands of images.

There's an example of one of my photographs taken at Walt Disney World. Below I will list the metadata I have added to it to give you an idea of how useful it is.

Liberty Bell replica across from the Hall of Presidents in the Magic Kingdom.
Nikon D70/18-70G, 1/13s, f/4.5, 1600 ISO, EV +0.3, 50mm Focal length

Caption: A replica of the Liberty Bell illuminated after dark in Liberty Square across from the Hall of Presidents in the Magic Kingdom, Walt Disney World, Orlando, Florida.

Keywords: america, bell, florida, hall of presidents, liberty, liberty bell, magic kingdom, night, orlando, walt disney world

Copyright: © Scott Thomas Photography

To find this photo in my library of photographs, all I'd need to do is search on any of the keywords listed. The more specific the search, the faster I'll find it.

Today, libraries, museums and public institutions all over the world are in the process of digitizing their important archives of papers, letters, books and photographs in their collections. Metadata will be how we find and access all these newly digitized documents as they are made available online for all of us to use.

One of the first things I had to deal with when I first started using a digital camera was how to organize all the files I was creating every time I went out taking photographs. The camera manufacturers think their simple system of a strange prefix followed by a number is what anyone would ever need. Blah! After producing hundreds of image files, I ended up doing folders for each time which got even more chaotic.

When facing this ongoing problem, I first identified the need to name this files so I could easily sort them. I read how others were doing it. Many like to use some sort of descriptive name which includes a prefix of meaning (like WDW for Walt Disney World) followed by a date designation and a sequential number. I tried this type of system for awhile but found the prefix was a bit confusing for me and decided to use a standard prefix for all my photos. Here is what a typical name for one of my digital photo files looks like: STP_20080905_025.jpg. The prefix of STP stands for Scott Thomas Photography then an underscore to separate the date which is in long year, month, day format which is easy to sort in chronological order with another underscore separating the sequential order. This works for me. You may have come up with a different system. I only use one camera right now. If I add another camera in the future, I will add a camera type to the prefix so it will be easy to see which camera took what photo. Don't forget, there's a lot of data contained in each photo's Exif which in future weeks I'll show how that can be used.

Now, how did I get from the camera's name for the files that look like DSC_2345 to my system? For that I use a program which takes my files from the compact flash memory card and loads them onto my laptop. As it copies the files down it renames them using the photo file's date and adds the prefix and sequential number suffix around it. For instance, below is my photo STP_20070524_0008.jpg. This also happens to be the location where the AllEars.net Pictures This! Photowalk at Mousefest will start (click on link for more information and to sign up).

Sea Breeze Point near Disney's Boardwalk Resort.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/500s, f/5.6, 200 ISO, 0 EV, 200mm Focal length

Backlighting is light illuminating from behind the subject. This is very tough to correctly expose for and causes havoc with your camera's light meter.

If you are outdoors and the light source is the sun, the best way to meter for backlighting is to point your camera to one side of the sun or the other, read what your meter is saying in Auto or Program mode, switch to Manual mode and then set the aperture and shutter speed. This will create a silhouette of the subject. Let me point out that you should never point your camera directly at the sun. In fact, do not have the sun anywhere in the frame when you are metering.

You can also bring out more detail in your subject if, still in manual mode, you open up one or more f-stops. This is what I did in the photo of the male African Lion when taking an early morning Kilimanjaro Safari in Disney's Animal Kingdom. When pointing my lens to one side of the sun, I got an exposure of 1/1600th of a second shutter speed and an aperture of f/16. By opening up one stop to f/11, I brought out more features and color of the lion. Remember, the smaller the f-stop, the larger the lens opening or aperture thus letting in more light to enter when the shutter is pressed.

You may be wondering why the shutter speed is so fast in this case. Let me tell you, those "jeeps" on the safari bounce and rock a lot. So, I increased the camera's ISO to allow for faster shutter speeds. For more on this technique, visit my tips on photographing on a Kilimanjaro Safari.

A male African Lion is backlight on an early morning Kilimanjaro Safari.
Nikon D70/80-200D, 1/1600s, f/11, 800 ISO, EV +0.3, 200mm Focal length

If you can get close enough to your subject either by using a zoom lens or being able to walk up to it, take your meter reading with the subject filling the frame through your viewfinder. Again, set your exposure manually and either zoom out or back away, compose your shot with the light behind your subject and you should get a great photograph.

There will not be a Photographic Innoventions next week as I am taking a vacation to various parts along the Atlantic shore ending up at Magic Meets. I'll be helping Deb Wills out at the AllEars table along with Lisa and attending many events and presentations. See you there or see you back here in two weeks.

Sidelighting is light illuminating from a 90 degree angle to the subject. This gives an almost three dimensional effect to the subject being photographed. As seen below in this photo of The ESPN Club at Disney's Boardwalk Resort, the sidelighting creates shadows in the restaurant's exterior features showing depth in a two dimensional medium.

Sidelight hits The ESPN Club near Disney's Boardwalk Resort giving a 3-D effect.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/800s, f/8, 200 ISO, EV -0.3, 200mm Focal length

Almost as important as the amount of light for a photograph is the direction the light is coming from. In the next three weeks, I'll show you how the direction of light effects your photographs. It doesn't matter what kind of camera you use, light properties and direction remain the same.

Frontlighting is light illuminating the front of a subject. The best kind of outdoor frontlighting is shown below when I captured the Resort Monorail heading to the Magic Kingdom while some anglers fished in the Seven Seas Lagoon. The sun was still low enough not to cast too much of a shadow below the monorail and evenly illuminated it and the fishing boat.

The Resort Monorail is frontlighted by the morning sun as it heads to the Magic Kingdom.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/800s, f/8, 200 ISO, EV -0.3, 200mm Focal length

A variation of the sunny frontlight is the Overcast Frontlight. This is very nice, soft, even light and brings out colors and textures hard to see in bright sun. The ostrich on Disney's Animal Kingdom's Kilimanjaro Safari is a nice example. This was taken on one of the first morning safaris so the sun was behind me when I took this.

Overcast frontlighting as shown by this ostrich on Disney's Animal Kingdom's Kilimanjaro Safari.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/200s, f/8, 200 ISO, EV 0, 65mm Focal length

Something you have to be careful of when shooting with overcast skies is to try and keep the sky out of the image as much as possible. The overcast sky acts like a huge light diffuser but is very bright. In the above photo, I wanted the jeep following mine in the picture or I would have framed it with only the ostrich and without the sky.

A couple of weeks ago I decided to clean the sensor in my Nikon D70 dSLR camera after taking hours cleaning up sensor dust spots on over a hundred images using software. Hopefully, you haven't seen sensor dust too much. The images I had were shot with apertures of f/16 and f/22 with a lot of clear blue sky. They revealed a lot of dust on the sensor. So, off I went to my local camera shop. They recommended a sensor cleaning kit which consisted of six sterile swabs and a vial of cleaning solution. Take note that the cleaning solution must be for your camera.

If you discover sensor dust while you are away from home, Barrie's tip on how to avoid sensor dust will hold you over until you can blow it off or clean the sensor.

Getting back to physically cleaning the sensor, here is what you need to know and do to clean your camera's sensor successfully: find out how to set Mirror Lockup on your camera, tripod, air blower like a Giottos Rocket Blaster and purchase a sensor cleaning kit. I've listed a few reference links at the bottom to help you locate the kits for any dSLR camera.

After I got everything together and put my camera on the tripod, I aimed it downward, removed the lens, set the Mirror Lock-Up and clicked the shutter. This flips up the mirror and reveals the sensor. Well, it sort of reveals the sensor as all sensors are protected with a coating over them. It is the coating which gets the sensor dust on it and needs to be cleaned. I start out by using the Giottos Rocket Blaster to blow out any loose material on and around the sensor. Once that is complete, I aim the camera back up so I can see the sensor.

Following the directions with the sensor cleaning kit I have (yours might have be different), I put two drops of cleaning solution on the sterile swab. Applying pressure, I put the swab on my side. It's the right size to cover the sensor from top to bottom as I sweep it across in one direction, flip the swab over and repeat the sweep in the other direction. I wish I could say it was cleaned after the first swipe. It took all six of the swabs to get the sensor cleaned to my satisfaction. I had some welded on dust on the sensor which even required a little back and forth scrubbing. I still have plenty of cleaning solution left over so will get some more swabs to have around for future cleanings.

Nikon D70 dSLR camera with mirror locked up. The greenish rectangle is the sensor.

It wasn't hard to do and if you take your time and use the proper tools, I don't think you have to worry about damaging your sensor. I intend to clean mine more often now that I see how easy it was to do.

Reference Links:

Demystifying D-SLR Sensor Cleaning

How To Clean Your Camera's Sensor

More Cleaning a Digital Sensor Research Links

Just as I reviewed another online photo editor last October, Picnik, Adobe was announcing one of their own. Called Adobe Photoshop Express and released as Beta software early this year. Currently it is free to try in it's current state. I expect, like Picnik, they will have a more robust version for a subscription fee once Photoshop Express is out of the beta stage.

Photoshop Express, unlike the PC version of Photoshop, is mainly a photo editor with very little in the way of graphic ability. However, it does what it does very, very well. With a free account, you get 2 GB of storage to upload your photos to work on. You have a main library where all your photos reside and you can create albums to organize them in. You can email, run a slideshow and edit photos from an album. This is where Photoshop Express has it over Picnik which has online storage but no way to organize them.

Clicking on a photo will reveal a menu where you can do a few things besides editing and is a nice touch so you don't have to open a photo to do some things with it. Once you decide to edit a photo, the editor has a very clean and easy to work with interface (see below). Down the left side of the browser window you have a list of tools you can use broken up into three submenus: Basics, Tuning and Effects.

Basics - Crop and/or Rotate, Auto Correct, Exposure, Red-Eye Removal, Touchup and Saturation. As in Picnik, I like to start with the Auto Correct to see what it comes up with. Often it does everything I need except it does not add any sharpening.

Tuning - White Balance, Highlight, Fill Light, Sharpen and Soft Focus. This is where you can tweak your photo for color, lighting and sharpness.

Effects - Pop Color, Hue, Black & White, Tint, Sketch and Distort. Here is where you can have some real fun with your photos and the only place you can play with graphic interpretations of them in Photoshop Express.

Adobe Photoshop Express Online Photo Editor

When selecting a tool which will alter your photo, Photoshop Express will show you versions of your photo in a row above it. Below the row of photos is a bar you can slide to vary the change between the versions along with your original starting photo. I found these to be a great help in making my decisions when using each tool.

Okay, enough chatter, lets see how I used Photoshop Express on one of my photos of Cinderella's Castle tower. Below is the photo in question. I almost rejected this photo outright but it was the only one I took of this scene and I liked the late afternoon light and composition. The notes on the photo represent what I wanted to fix in this image.

Editing notes of Cinderella's Castle in the Magic Kingdom.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/400s, f/10, 200 ISO, 0 EV, 55mm Focal Length

Again, I tried the Auto Correct but wasn't really happy with any of the versions Photoshop Express came up with. I quickly turned to the Exposure tool (this is the tool you see in the first image above) and I really liked the version second to the right of the original. This nicely brought up the underexposed sky and some of the shadows of the tower. Next, I used the Retouch tool to get rid of the pesky sensor dust. This tool is very easy to work with. Just select the size of the "brush" (a circle) and click on the dust. Bingo, all gone! The last Basics tool I used was to Saturate the color a little bit by selecting the first Photoshop Express version shown to the right of the original. Again, I found these versions great to use.

Moving on to the Tuning menu. I started with the White Balance tool. Even though you'll be working with JPEG files and not RAW files, this tool surprised me in how it worked. I didn't think I would use any of the versions but found I liked the Sunset setting and selected it. Fill Light is something I liked about the free Picasa Photo Editor and the Photoshop Express version did not disappoint in opening up the shadows in the towers without adding more light to the background sky. Lastly, went to the Sharpen tool which has a neat little 100% square you can move around the image. The views above are of the square with increased sharpening going from left to right. You can select one of them which sharpens the entire image to that sharpening amount or use the slider to increase sharpening as you move it to the right. I found the first version to the right was perfect for my tastes.

Here's the final result of all my selected adjustments.

Cinderella's Castle towers in the Magic Kingdom after using Photoshop Express.

I am quite happy with how it came out. I couldn't resist playing in the Effects area. I'll leave it up to you to discover how these work. Here's a link to a purple and green hued version of the above photo: Joker Towers.

Now, how did I remember all those things I did? Simple. Photoshop Express remembers all your settings so you can go back, tweak them again or change them around and save the new version under a different name.

In conclusion, I enjoyed using Photoshop Express for both it's online library and editor. I hope in the future Adobe will add graphics for text and more effects. Photoshop Express can retrieve and save to popular photo sites Flickr, Photobucket and Picasa Photo Albums as well as the Facebook community.

A couple of months ago I started using Apple's Aperture 2 photo application. The photo editor in Aperture is much better than anything I've ever used. While not a true graphics editor like Photoshop, Aperture does have some tools which are helping me make great photographs from not-so-great ones.

Like this photo of a performer in Disney's Animal Kingdom's Festival of the Lion King show. I caught her just before she was about to blow a kiss to the audience at the end of the show. I really loved this photo except for the object on the right hand side. I believe it's a hand or part of a costume from another performer passing out of the frame.

Festival of the Lion King Goodbye Kiss before cloning.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/60s, f/5.6, 1600 ISO, -0.3 EV, 200mm Focal Length

I could crop the object out but, with such a high ISO, the image would get even grainer than it already is. Aperture, like other photo editors, has a clone repair tool. What a clone repair tool does is allow you to take a part of a photo and then "paint" over another area duplicating that part. You do this with a "brush". In Aperture's case, it's a circle.

To go about fixing this photo, I selected the cloning tool and adjusted it's size. The area just above the object is what I used to clone. I moved the brush there and clicked the mouse to select it. Then, I moved my mouse with the left button held down over the area and carefully replaced the object with the selected area. Below is the final result after a few tries. Many editors let you start over if you don't like the initial results. If your photo editor doesn't, be sure to save a backup before starting. To see if your photo editor is capable of cloning, look through it's manual or support website.

Festival of the Lion King Goodbye Kiss after cloning.

Don't get nervous. Manual mode is NOT a mythical mode only for the professional photographer. Manual mode lets you have more control over exposure using your ability to change aperture, shutter speed, and ISO to create a good photograph. The link I will give you at the end of today's article will describe in detail how to use Manual mode. For now, I would like to tell you about a couple of subjects I use Manual mode for. Again, I apologize for having to use non-Walt Disney World images.

The photo you see below was taken last summer as some boaters were cruising on Lake Ontario at sunset. To get a proper exposure without overexposing or blowing out all the bright colors of the sky, I metered the sky just to one side of the setting sun. Metering means I read my camera's exposure using Program mode which gave me an exposure of 1/125s at f/8 for the camera's ISO setting of 200. Once, I got this, I put the camera into Manual mode by moving the Mode Dial to the M position and set the exposure. Being in manual mode, I knew those settings would not change and were correct for the sky. This technique will make anything between the camera and sky into a silhouette which is what I wanted for this picture.

Evening cruise at sunset on Lake Ontario.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/125s, f/8, 200 ISO, -0.3 EV, 200mm Focal Length

Another time I put my camera in Manual mode is for capturing images of fireworks. For this technique you need a tripod and a remote shutter release. I set the shutter speed to B which is the Bulb setting. This means once I press the shutter, it stays open until I press it again. This is why you need to use a remote shutter release so as not to shake the camera when pressing the shutter button. I set a small aperture of f/16 to get a large depth of field and keep everything in focus. When I hear a rocket being launched, I press the remote to "trip" the shutter open (means to press the shutter button) and leave it open until the colored streams reach their peak. Then, I trip the shutter closed. In the photo below, this took 5 seconds and I got a couple of other smaller explosions of color as an added bonus.

Fireworks during a festival in Baldwinsville, New York.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 5s, f/16, 200 ISO, 0 EV, 38mm Focal Length

For more on photographing fireworks, especially at Walt Disney World, visit Barrie's Great Disney World Photos website (scroll down until you see the Photographing Fireworks section).

Manual mode is not hard to use. It takes some practice and checking your LCD monitors to see if you need to change any of the settings. The histogram is very useful here as well to let you know if you are getting a good exposure.

This link covers in more detail about how to use Manual mode and is a good review for both Aperture and Shutter Priority modes: Master Your dSLR Camera: Manual Mode and More.

Aperture seems to work in reverse to common sense. Measured in f/stops, the smaller the f/stop, the larger the aperture or opening of the camera's iris and the more light is allowed to hit the sensor. It also controls the Depth of Field or how much or how little the plane of focus is in your photographs.

In the photo of Expedition EVEREST, I wanted everything sharply focused (a large plane of focus) from the tops of the trees to the clouds in the sky.

Expedition EVEREST in Disney's Animal Kingdom.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/60s, f/18, 200 ISO, +0.3 EV, 35mm Focal Length

To get the maximum depth of field, I moved the Dial Mode to the A position to put my camera in Aperture Priority mode. I now had control of the aperture or f/stop setting by turning the command dial (this may be different for your camera so check your manual. There I go again!). I took a series of photos of Expedition EVEREST, waiting for the train to enter the mountain. It took a few tries to get the timing down. Once I downloaded the files to my laptop, I liked this one the best at f/18. It shows every detail in mountain's "rock" and "snow" with a nice base frame of trees and top frame of sky. I took this while waiting outside the Theater in the Wild to see Finding Nemo -- The Musical.

On the Maharajah Jungle Trek, the sun angle on this hanging Malayan Flying Fox showed how thin the membranes are in his wings. To make sure the background went out of focus, I selected an aperture of f/5.6 for a narrow plane of focus. This technique is called selective focus and is a great way of separating your subject from a busy or unappealing background.

Malayan Flying Fox (Pteropus vampyrus) soaking up the sun on the Maharajah Jungle Trek.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/25s, f/5.6, 200 ISO, +0.3 EV, 120mm Focal Length

On to top of your digital SLR or advanced Point & Shoot cameras is a Mode Dial. On this dial you will find the main shooting modes to let you take more creative control of your photography. Below is a list with a short decription for each one. For more detailed information, consult your camera's manual.

AUTO or A-DEP - this is an SLR's version of a Point & Shoot mode. It will calculate your exposure for you including the ISO, metering mode, aperture and shutter speed (this may vary by manufacturer).

P for Program - calculates the aperture and shutter speed given the camera's settings for ISO, metering mode, and white balance (this may vary by manufacturer).

S or Tv for Shutter Priority - you set the shutter speed manually and the aperture is calculated for you given the camera's settings for ISO, metering mode, and white balance (this may vary by manufacturer).

A or Av for Aperture Priority - you set the aperture or f-stop manually and the shutter speed is calculated for you given the camera's settings for ISO, metering mode, and white balance (this may vary by manufacturer).

M for Manual - you set both the aperture and shutter speed and take full manual control of all the camera settings. You have to be careful here as some other settings may or may not be affected. Check your camera's manual.

With that little primer finished, I'm going to start with the Shutter Priority (S) Mode and continue a series of entries over the next few weeks to cover the rest. Let's climb right into how to use the S-Mode by looking at this photo from Epcot's Canadian pavilion featuring the Rocky Mountains with a very tall waterfall.

Rocky Mountain waterfall in Epcot's Canadian pavilion.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/30s, f/18, 200 ISO, -0.3 EV, 28mm Focal Length

I took a few images of this beautiful scene with the late day light striking the top of the mountains and the waterfall cascading down the mountain side. For the first ones, I was in P or Program mode and it kept selecting shutter speeds which froze the water. Made the water look very static and uninteresting. Often when taking pictures of moving objects, like water, you want to show it's motion. The best way to do that is to use a slow shutter speed.

To get the effect you see above, I turned the Mode Dial on my Nikon D70 to S putting it in Shutter Priority mode. I now had control of the shutter speed by turning the command dial (this may be different for your camera so check your manual. Sound like a broken record, don't I?). I took photographs at shutter speeds of 1/60, 1/30, and 1/15 of a second. Each time the camera selected the aperture for me based on the other camera settings (refer to the Exif data below the photo).

I'm sure you have seen other waterfall photographs where even longer shutter speeds were used giving the water an even softer look. Those pictures were taken with shutter speeds over multiple seconds and require a tripod to keep the rest of scene in sharp focus. Something I didn't have with me during this visit to Walt Disney World.

If you are taking pictures of action scenes like the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular or Lights, Motors, Action! Extreme Stunt shows at Disney's Hollywood Studios, you may want to use a very fast shutter speed to freeze the action. I would start at 1/250 for Indy and 1/500 for Lights, Motors, Action!

For more on the use of shutter speeds, check out some of our past Picture This! entries:

Shutter Speeds and You

Mechanics of Exposure

You hear about all kinds of "modes" when you talk about digital photography. There's shooting modes, scene modes and metering modes. The later refers to how your camera meters or "sees" what's in front of it's lens. You see, inside each of our cameras is a light meter. Because it is viewing light reflected from the subject you are pointing your camera at, it's called a reflective light meter.

Reflective light meters are designed to see everything as 18% Gray in color with some variation. That would be fine if you were only taking pictures of gray cards, blue sky, green grass or the back of your hand. This is why when taking pictures of very bright or very dark scenes, your camera's meter gets fooled and you often end up with drab colors as the meter is trying to read everything as 18% gray. Thankfully, we can compensate for this by using the exposure compensation adjustment button found on our cameras.

There are three standard metering modes found on most digital SLRs (and many Point & Shoot cameras may have some or all three) which are Matrix, Center-weighted and Spot. Each works differently so you need to understand them to better use them to your advantage.

Matrix Metering Mode. This is sometimes referred to as evaluative metering. What matrix metering does is take readings from multiple points over the entire scene you are looking at through the viewfinder (refer to graphic on the left). The camera will then use it's internal programming to come up with an appropiate shutter speed and aperture (f/stop) to get a correct exposure. Remember, it's using 18% Gray to come up with that number. Having said that, today's modern digital cameras are very good when using this mode. I use matrix metering in most of my photography. Below is an example of a photo using matrix metering. Notice how Matrix metering trys to balance out the entire scene including the dark shadows behind and the light foliage in front.

Matrix Metering Mode Example. © Scott Thomas Photography 2008
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/125s, f/5.6, 200 ISO, +0.3 EV, 200mm Focal Length

Center-weighted Metering Mode. This metering mode needs a little explanation. The graphic is showing a large circle in the middle of the scene. When using center-weighted metering, the camera takes 75% of it's exposure data from the circle area and factors in the remaining from the scene outside the circle. I use this mode when I have tricky lighting with telephoto lenses greater than 100mm in focal length. The afternoon parades at Walt Disney World would be a good place to use center-weighted metering with bright Florida sun overhead and shadows moving across the floats and characters. Below is the same scene used for the Matrix example but this time using Center-weighted metering. You'll notice the shutter speed is a bit quicker and the shadow portion a little darker.

Center-weighted Metering Mode Example. © Scott Thomas Photography 2008
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/160s, f/5.6, 200 ISO, +0.3 EV, 200mm Focal Length

Spot Metering Mode. As the graphic shows, spot metering uses a small area in the center. Somewhere around 2 to 5% of what you see through the viewfinder. When you have very difficult lighting, the ability to measure such a small area is very handy. If you are taking a picture of someone with the light coming from behind them, more often than not, matrix metering would cause that person to be seen as a silhouette. Using spot metering, you can have the camera measure the exposure from the person's face only. Giving you a nice exposed face with rim lighting framing it from the backlighting. Now, where does very tricky lighting occur at Walt Disney World? Many of the shows use spotlights on the performers. Spot metering would be a good way to avoid overexposing them. In the scene used for Matrix and Center-weighted, when using Spot metering, the leaf in the middle is correctly exposed but the part in shadow is very dark.

Spot Metering Mode Example. © Scott Thomas Photography 2008
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/320s, f/5.6, 200 ISO, +0.3 EV, 200mm Focal Length

I hope you can forgive me for not using Disney photos this week. The following links will give you more information on metering modes:

Indroduction to Metering Modes

Choose A Metering Mode

Camera Metering & Exposure

Once in awhile I'll take a picture that calls out for something different. In the case of the photo below when I first looked at it on my computer monitor, I thought it could have been taken back in the time of the American Old West in the mid-1800's. Those photos are in tones of browns, yellows and whites and referred to as sepia which lots of photo software and online editors can create. If you don't know if your favorite editor has a way to transform your photos into a sepia tone, check out it's manual or search through it's help files.

Frontierland Rail Road Station in Color. Copyright © Scott Thomas Photography 2008
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/125s, f/11, 200 ISO, -1.0 EV, 18mm Focal Length

Now, if it wasn't for the fact that Frontierland never existed in the real American Old West and ignoring the modern sign in the lower left, the transformation into a sepia toned photo makes it look like it was taken back in the 1800's. This is a great way to take a simple portrait or landscape and bring it into the past. You can see a larger version of either photo just by clicking on them.

Frontierland Rail Road Station in Sepia. Copyright © Scott Thomas Photography 2008

I love color. When I was young and my favorite afternoon cartoon program said they would be showing them in color I was excited. When I tuned in the next day it was still in black and white! I complained to my mother who carefully explained we didn't have a color television yet. A couple of years later I finally got to see not only cartoons but Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color on Sunday nights in full, living color. Yes, I definitely like color.

Even in my photography, I have always preferred color over black and white. With the advent of the digital darkroom, however, I have started to explore other interpretations of my photographs. There are all kinds of ways to alter your digital images and one of the most popular is rending them from color to black and white.

Harper's Mill can be seen from the walk way between Frontierland and Liberty Square. You can also see it when taking a cruise on a Riverboat. Disney Imagineers are known for their attention to detail and Harper's Mill is one of those park additions which add to the ambiance of Tom Sawyer's Island. I took this in the mid-day sun so it has very bright highlights and deep shadows. This is often referred to as a high contrast image. A perfect candidate for a black and white conversion.

Harper's Mill on Tom Sawyer's Island in Color. Copyright © Scott Thomas Photography 2008
Nikon D70/80-200D, 1/250s, f/6.3, 200 ISO, +0.3 EV, 80mm Focal Length

Most photo software and online editors have a way to turn your color images to black and white. Check your editor's manual or help files on how to do this. Editors vary in the amount of control you have from none to total control of the contrast and amount of the conversion. Below is a simple Black and White rending using Picnik.com, my favorite online photo editor. You can see a larger version of either photo just by clicking on them.

Harper's Mill in Black & White. Copyright © Scott Thomas Photography 2008

Also, check out Jack Spence's Blog on The Old Mill which explains some of the background information about the building.

Let's talk about how to use your digital camera to easily and inexpensively take photographs of your valuable Disney collections and memorabilia which has been coined Disneyana. Here's the items we'll need this week: a digital camera of any kind, a tripod for the camera, a remote shutter release (or use your camera's timer), a typical desk lamp, a bounce surface like some white cardboard and a sheet of white (or other color) poster board. Some of this you may have or can get cheaply at a local photo, drug or craft store.

For very small items like pins, you can use your camera's macro setting for a P&S. For a digital SLR, you can use any lens and crop your photos if needed. Other possibilities might be a macro setting on a zoom lens or a dedicated macro lens.

Okay, got your stuff? Ready to do some Disneyana photography? Good! As an example, here's my setup...

Simple Setup for Collectibles

Since we are not going to use flash and using a light which is either a typical incandescent bulb or maybe a fluorescent one, make sure you set your camera's white balance to the correct one. Notice how I used the sheet of paper to make a seamless background. You will have to play with the light and bounce surface to get the item lighted the way you want. I have my camera set to Aperture Priority of f/8 or better for good depth of field. The lighting I am using gives me a slow shutter speed of 1/30th of a second or slower. A good reason to use a tripod and remote shutter release (or camera timer) to avoid a blurry picture.

Fantasia Mickey Desk Clock. © Scott Thomas Photography 2008
Nikon D70/50mm, 1/30s, f/9, ISO 400, +1.0 EV

Not only is this a good way to document your Disney collections, you can use this setup to take pictures of all your small valuables like jewelry. Save them to a CD or DVD and put in a safety deposit box. To take this a little further, take photos of all your home's rooms and pieces of furniture, electronics, art work and other items you own in case of a fire or natural disaster. This alone could more than pay for your camera. Oh, and don't forget to take a picture of that, too! You might have to borrow your kid's digital camera for that one.

Of course, this setup is good for taking pictures for your eBay auctions, too. You know, to help pay for your next Walt Disney World vacation. To make your photo stand out on eBay, use contrasting backgrounds which go with the item. Putting a piece of glass underneath adds a pleasing reflection.

Fantasia Mickey Figurine. © Scott Thomas Photography 2008
Nikon D70/50mm, 1/25s, f/11, ISO 400, +1.0 EV

Further Reading: How to Take Better Photos for eBay

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Last week, I went over how to use an external flash unit or speedlight to bounce it's light to improve on flash photography. We learned to vastly improve the look of the classic straight on flash look. Very easy if you have a ceiling less than 20 feet high. However, if you are having breakfast at Chef Mickey's where the ceiling is hundreds of feet above you or in Ragland Road where the ceiling and walls are very dark, bouncing the flash is not practical.

In those situations, I turn to my handy, dandy LumiQuest ProMax Pocket Bouncer to help me bounce my flash onto my subjects. The LumiQuest Pocket Bouncer comes with Velcro which sticks to the sides of a speedlight for easy attaching and detaching. You can see the Velcro below in the picture of the flash at 0 degrees. To demonstrate, I am, again, being assisted by my lovely model, Shirley, who is still wearing those stylish Golden Mickey Mouse Ears.

No Flash Bounce	Flash at 0 degrees
Again, here's the typical look of the straight on flash. Harsh light, flat features, washed out colors and shadows haloing poor Shirley. If Shirley was a live model who had hair, you might also see the red eye effect.
LumiQuest Pocket Bouncer	Flash with LumiQuest Bouncer
Using the LumiQuest ProMax Pocket Bouncer, you see how the light becomes softer and Shirley's features and color come back. Since the Pocket Bouncer deflects some light at the subject, shadows under the eyes and nose are not a problem.

The LumiQuest ProMax Pocket Bouncer sends a lot more light at your subjects then bouncing off a ceiling or wall. To compensate, adjust the flash to fire at a lesser intensity. Read your flash's manual to see how this is done. With the Nikon SB-600, I set the compensation to -1.0 to start and adjust from there. Be careful to first set your camera's onboard flash compensation to zero. If you don't, the effect will be cumulative. Adding or subjecting from what you set the flash at.

Many photographers don't like to use flash. After learning all the ways of exposure, ISO settings and the use of the exposure compensation button, flash poses another learning curve. I'm here to tell you, learning to use flash is not hard and can give you another tool for getting professional-looking photos at home and in the Disney parks. I know what you are thinking, you can't use flash at many of Disney's shows and attractions. That is true but don't forget there are many places were flash can be used like restaurants, resorts, character meets and meals, and outdoor photography.

Before we get started, I would like to you meet my model, Shirley. Shirley doesn't get out much as she's been living in a box for the last 10 years. However, when I came up with the idea to do a blog entry on bounce flash, she was the first model that came to mind. Since this is a Disney blog, I let Shirley model some Golden Mickey Mouse Ears.

No Flash Bounce	Flash at 0 degrees
Here's the typical look of the straight on flash. Harsh light, flat features, washed out colors and shadows haloing the subject. Not a very flattering look for Shirley. If Shirley was a live model, you might also see the red eye effect.
45 degree Flash Bounce	Flash at 45 degrees
When you invest in a flash for your digital SLR, make sure the head of the flash can be adjusted both up and down and side to side. This allows you to bounce the flash off of ceilings and walls. This softens the harsh light as it spreads out from the surface it hits. By putting the flash at an angle of 45 degrees, you can see Shirley's facial features and color return. As an added bonus, the ears of the hat are now seen clearly as light is coming from above.
90 degree Flash Bounce	Flash at 90 degrees
To soften the flash even more, angle the flash a full 90 degrees. This spreads out the light even more. You can see the different light direction in the Mickey Mouse ears. The only issue I have with this one and the 45 degree angled photo is the shadow under Shirley's eyes. If you subject had on a baseball cap (which many young people wear these days), it would be really hard to see the person's eyes.
90 degree Flash Bounce with card	Flash at 90 degrees with bounce card
Many of the flash units, also called speedlights, have a small white tab that can be extended out from the flash's head. This will deflect some light in your subject's direction. If the subject is a person or animal, you'll get pleasant specular highlights or catch lights in their eyes. My flash does not have this tab so I used a white piece of cardboard and attached it with a rubber band. You can see how Shirley's features are still there and the shadow under her eyes have disappeared.

I have to warn you to look out for colored surfaces. The light of the flash will pick up the color. The best ones to use are white surfaces or shades of grey. Next week I'll show you how to handle bounce flash when you are outdoors or have no light surfaces to use.

Further Reading: Here's some more great articles on bouncing your flash.

Bounce Flash

Lighting tip - 4 ways to bounce a flash

Take better flash photos in one easy step

I was reading about some photographers who came back from an African safari the other day. They listed the equipment they used the most. Cameras costing thousands of dollars, lenses in the 500 to 600mm range which cost, you guessed it, thousands more. It got me to thinking about how wonderful the Kilimanjaro Safari is in Disney's Animal Kingdom. However, it does have it's challenges, too. With that in mind, I'd like to give you my list of equipment needed and other tips to get great wildlife photography in the Harambe Reserve.

I would recommend a camera or camera and lens combination which will reach out to 300mm or more. This will allow you to fill the frame with an animal or animals. Many Point and Shoot cameras do not do this. You can still get some great environmental photos of the savannah and when the animals venture close to your "jeep". For me, I'd recommend a high end Point and Shoot camera with an 8x or more zoom lens. If you own a digital SLR, a lens reaching 200 to 300mm (depending on your camera's crop factor) will work great. I have used a couple of different lenses on the safari with good results. A Nikon 80-200mm f/4.5-5.6D AF and the 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 G ED-IF AF-S VR DX Zoom lenses. With my Nikon D70 crop of 1.5, I get a 300mm focal length with either lens. There are many economically priced zoom lenses in the 55mm or longer to 200 to 300mm range.

Baby Elephant (uncropped photo). © Scott Thomas Photography 2008
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/500s, f/5.6, ISO 400, -0.3 EV, 200mm Focal Length

Now the part which separates the P&S from the dSLR, because the jeep was designed to give a bumpy ride and it does move, you have to set your camera to get fast shutter speeds to cut down on blurry pictures due to vibration. Anit-vibration technologies aside, those jeeps sway and bump even when stopped as people try to get to one side or the other to see the animals. I set my camera to Shutter priority mode and 1/500th of a second shutter speed. If it happens to be a very bright day you can set it even faster. You may have to increase your ISO setting to obtain these shutter speeds. I usually set mine to an ISO of 800 if it's an early morning or late afternoon safari and 400 if it's during the mid-day sun.

Due to the distance even with a long lens, chances are you will want to crop your photos as, again, it's hard to compose in a moving, bouncy vehicle. A 6 megapixel (MP) or more camera is probably going to give you the ability to do this. Lower MP cameras will not give you as much creative leeway. In the African Lion photo below, I cropped this from the original portrait orientation to eliminate some sky which was cloudy and the bottom portion which featured a fellow guest's arm.

African Lion (cropped photo). © Scott Thomas Photography 2008
Nikon D70/80-200D, 1/500s, f/5.6, ISO 800, +0.3 EV, 200mm Focal Length

I've ridden on both sides of the jeep and have found most of the good viewing is on the left side. They load you from the right side so you want to be the first one in a row. The hippos, giraffes, elephants, crocodiles, and many of the antelopes tend to be on the left side.

Giraffe Mother & Calf (uncropped photo). © Scott Thomas Photography 2008
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/500s, f/5.6, ISO 800, +0.3 EV, 200mm Focal Length

Time to get on your safari hat, shirt and shorts to go after some big game, Disney-style! Oh, don't forget to make sure you have extra batteries and they are all charged up before you leave your room. Nothing like having the perfect shot of a giraffe in your viewfinder, pressing the shutter and your camera tells you it's battery is too low. Don't ask me how I know this.

Joe McNally is a photographer to be admired. He's been published all over the world and in such publications as National Geographic, Time, and Sports Illustrated to name a few. In over 30 years as a pro photographer, Joe McNally has been faced with capturing photographs in some of the most bizarre places on Earth (and New York City) and under some strange circumstances and still managed to come away with publishable work. What would you give to sit down with Joe and learn at the feet of one of the masters? Luckily for us, Joe has given us such an opportunity, with some encouragement from his friends, his book, The Moment It Clicks, came out to resounding reviews and sold out of it's first printing within days. It's now in a second printing and I'm sure many more will follow.

I recommend this book if you are past the beginning stage in your photography comfort zone. He does assume you have an understanding of photography. Anything beyond that he explains in footnotes or in the "How to Get this Shot" sidebars. The real charm of this book is in all the "nuggets". These nuggets are short bits of knowledge and photographic common sense he has garnered during his career of working with clients, photo editors, models and other photographers. You would spend hundreds of dollars to see Joe in a workshop give some of these nuggets. For less than $40 you have them, examples of some of the best journalistic photos he ever produced and how he did them to reference anytime you want.

If you are thinking of becoming a professional photographer in any field. This is a must read in my opinion. Someday I hope to meet Joe and thank him for this book. While it is inspirational, I enjoyed it for the mental and physical perspiration which went into each of the photos he presents and for passing on his knowledge in a straight forward and personable manner.

Now, in Joe McNally style, here's a self-assignment I gave myself on my last Walt Disney World trip. Pictured below are my two daughters and a friend riding Big Thunder Mountain. My daughters are both in college and I don't know how many more times they'll want to spend with Dad on vacation. I wanted to capture a moment of joy. One I can look back on and recall the spirit of what the Disney parks mean to me. It doesn't matter they were hamming it up. The fact that they did is a testament to Walt Disney, himself. This is one of those moments it clicked for me.

The Joy of Disney. © Scott Thomas Photography 2008
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/320s, f/9, 200 ISO, 18mm Focal Length

Further Reading: Here's another review from Dave Black of "The Moment It Clicks". Dave has a unique way of taking you inside the book.

We've all done it. You get off of the Tower of Terror a few minutes before the afternoon parade is to start and rush down Sunset Blvd. You get there and all the curb side places are taken. In fact, people had staked out their places hours before. As the crowd is three deep, you end up having to shoot over people's heads like this.

Lilo & Stitch Motorcar. Copyright © Scott Thomas Photography 2008
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/200s, f/8, 200 ISO, 35mm Focal Length

This is where a zoom lens comes in handy. You can fill the frame with your subjects. Eliminating foreground and background distractions. At full zoom, many times you have to shoot with a wider aperture which will cause the background behind your subject to get that pleasing bokeh like this.

Lilo & Stitch Closeup. Copyright © Scott Thomas Photography 2008
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/320s, f/5.6, 200 ISO, 200mm Focal Length

Ah, that's much better and you didn't have to barge in front of anyone. I have found a zoom lens that goes to 200mm to be an excellent way to capture parade, street and stage performers at Walt Disney World.

One of the problems we all have at Walt Disney World is distracting backgrounds. From sharing the resorts with thousands of other guests to uncooperative animals or characters, backgrounds are hard to control. So, what's a photographer to do? First, you have to do some very obvious things each time you look through your viewfinder. Before you press the shutter, look behind and in front of your subject for protruding objects coming out or into the frame, make sure your subject is the focal point of the frame and not a building or person nearby and lines like horizons or buildings are not distracting by being crooked . I learned these points the hard way when I did wedding photography for a few years. Believe me, nobody wants a portrait of a bride with the church's organ pipes protruding from her head.

Another way to control the background at a busy themepark is to move around your subject until you find a more pleasing background. In the photo here of Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket, I tried to use a wide angle to slightly distort the statue to bring it front and center. The angle is a bit different, however, the background is very busy partially due to the use of the small f/10 aperture. You can see lights in the flower bed , a person kneeling next to a stroller in the upper left and part of the fence leading up to the statue on the right. Not very pleasing to me.

I checked out the previous picture in my camera's LCD display and knew I could do better. Since this was taken during a December trip, Disney had placed poinsettia "trees" around the hub in front of Cinderella's Castle and by moving a bit to one side, I could put one of them directly behind the statue. I tried a few different angles and liked this one the best. I zoomed in a bit here which helped to blur the background some even shooting at f/10. The direction of the light is much better as well but that's a subject for another time.

Further Reading: Getting Backgrounds Right

No, it's not the name of a new ballroom dance craze. Bokeh is used to describe a certain camera lens characteristic. Bokeh comes from the Japanese word "boke" which means fuzzy. Sounds like a strange characteristic for a lens to have, doesn't it? Bokeh describes how the background looks when shooting with the lens at it's largest aperture. A lens with "good bokeh" has a nice smooth looking but out of focus (or fuzzy) background. Lenses with "bad bokeh" have spherical or other geometrical shapes with hard edges which look bad behind a sharply focused subject in the foreground.

The picture below shows what "good bokeh" looks like. The foliage behind the tiger on the Maharajah Jungle Trek is softly out of focus and does not take away from the handsome portrait. You will find when taking someone's portrait, this is the best way to separate them from the background. In my previous entry on the Creative Uses of Aperture, you can see another example of what good bokeh looks like.

Tiger on the Maharajah Jungle Trek in Disney's Animal Kingdom. © Scott Thomas Photography 2008
Nikon D70/80-200D, 1/125s, f/5.6, 400 ISO, +0.3 EV, 200mm focal length

Walt Disney World is magical at any time of the day but, at night, it's extra magical. So much so that Walt Disney World resort guests are able to enjoy Extra Magic Hours or EMH in all the parks (see link for schedule and more information). It was on just such a night in the Magic Kingdom when I took this photograph. It was 1AM and the park had another hour of EMH to go so there was still people walking about the hub area in front of Cinderella's Castle.

Cinderella's Castle at 1AM. © Scott Thomas Photography 2008
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/8s, f/3.8, 1100 ISO, -0.3 EV, 20mm focal length

Since night photography is very popular. This blog will have a few entries pertaining to how to get pictures after the sun goes down. This is when the digital SLR camera really shines so to speak. With their larger sensors, better lenses and faster and more powerful processors allowing the use of fast ISO numbers, a dSLR creates much better images after dark. The latest dSLRs get great results using ISO 3200 and even 6400. Couple that with noise reducing software and you can get amazing results.

For the picture above, I used my Nikon D70 with Auto ISO engaged and shot in Program mode. The camera selected the slowest shutter speed I would allow of 1/8 second for ISO 1100 and the widest aperture of f/3.8. The vibration reduction (VR) lens was set to ON and the rest was up to me. I did not have a tripod so I made myself into one. I leaned against an authentic WDW garbage can, used my elbows on the top of the garbage can (thankfully this was not one of the moving and talking variety), put my left hand under the lens to give it a good foundation, my right hand holding the camera firmly but not too tight, tucked my arms in close, lightly pressed the shutter halfway down to set the focus, held my breath and then slowly pressed the shutter the rest of the way. Don't mash the shutter. In fact, you should practice how to press a shutter this way to cut down vibration in the camera. As I've mentioned before, when taking photos in less than ideal conditions, you should take more than one. I took about a dozen of this scene with this being the best in the lot.

Further reading: I have lots of them. It'll be review for our regular readers but, please, read them over again as I'm sure you'll pick up even more each time you do so.

ePhotozine Night Photography Tutorial

Barrie's Astro Orbiter

Barrie's Portrait of Germany

To get the sharpest images possible with your lens, it's best not to use the widest or smallest apertures. Most lenses are optimized in the f/5.6 - f/11 aperture range and give their best performance when stopped down a couple of f-stops from the widest aperture. If you have a 50mm f/1.8 lens, it's best to use it around f/4 to f/8. Most consumer zoom lens have a sliding scale when it comes to their widest aperture. The Nikon 18-200VR lens I use has it's widest aperture of f/3.5 when it's at 18mm. At 200mm, it goes down to f/5.6. That's what it means when you see a lens' description like this: Nikon 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G VR Zoom Lens where this lens starts at f/4.5 at 70mm and goes down to f/5.6 at 300mm. Usually, the faster the lens, meaning the lens starts at a very large aperture, the more expensive the lens is.

So, why not use the widest or smallest aperture? The problem with using small aperture sizes is that light waves are affected due to diffraction and though you have great depth of field, you lose out on sharpness. Large apertures are great for low-light, but unless you have an exceptional lens, its just too difficult to produce lenses that are razor sharp when wide open.

Everest in Disney's Animal Kingdom. © Scott Thomas Photography 2008
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/200s, f/8, 200 ISO, -1.0 EV, 20mm focal length

These are good guidelines to start from. The best way to find out the best apertures for the lenses you own is to test them. Set up a small still life with various objects. Include something with text on it like a sign. Watches are also good as they are small and very detailed. Put your camera on a tripod and put it in aperture priority mode. Take a series of photos varying the aperture size with each one from the smallest f-stop to the largest. Download the pictures to your computer and view each photo at 100%. I found the sharpest aperture range for my 18-200VR lens to be around f/8 at 18mm and f/11 at 200mm doing similar testing when available light permits.

Further reading: Creative Uses of Aperture

Did you get a new High Definition (HD) TV for Christmas? You might want to pull out it's user manual and see how you can get your digital photos to display on it. Most come with a way to hook up your camera or computer directly to a video input. Some, like the Samsung DLP HDTV I own, have a USB port and built-in photo viewing program. I copy some photos to a USB Flash drive on my computer then plug it into the TV's USB port. I select the photo viewer program called Wiselink from the HDTV's menu and it displays the contents of the drive (see photo).

There is a gotcha. When copying the photos to the USB drive, I make sure the photos are 1920 pixels in width to fill the HDTV's screen. However, since my digital camera does not produce an HDTV's screen ratio of 16x9, I still end up with black bars on the left and right side of each picture. This is not a big deal for me because the large, bright and clear image displayed is still breathtaking. It's a very easy way to show others your photos without everyone having to crowd around a small computer screen.

I have noticed many of the newer cameras now have a 16x9 ratio selection when taking photos. Those images would completely fill the screen. Check your camera's manual to see if it supports this feature.

Back to my HDTV, I can either manually select and view each photo or start up a slideshow which displays each photo in sequence for a set number of seconds. I can even add music while it's running. This is a far cry from the days of bulky white movie screens, loud slide projectors and long boring presentations by the photographer. Well, two out of three isn't bad!

Space Mountain in the Magic Kingdom.
Nikon D70/18-70DX, 1/160s, f/6.3, 200 ISO, +0.3 EV, 50mm Focal Length

Parasols in Liberty Square.
Nikon D70/80-200D, 1/200s, f/5.6, 200 ISO, +0.3 EV, 135mm Focal Length

When I can, I like to find Photographic Gems at Walt Disney World. Gems can be found literally around each and every corner. Remember to look not at just the overall scene but at parts of them. This is how I found these colorful, personalized parasols being displayed next to a cart in the Magic Kingdom's Liberty Square across from the Christmas shop. It was a busy morning and there were people everywhere but the bright colors of the parasols caught my eye as I was scanning around. The Cast Member had taken great care in arranging the parasols in a pleasing fashion. Being in the shade, the picture came out a bit bluish so I adjusted the color temperature a bit towards the warm or red color in a photo editor.

Unlike when you used film, digital photography processing is done inside your camera and produces JPEG images. (dSLRs can also produce RAW images. RAW images are often referred to as digital negatives and require processing on a computer to produce the final JPEG image.) If you are like me, you try to get all your photos as close to perfect right out of the camera. It takes a lot of practice and getting to know your camera as to what settings give you the results you are looking for. I learn each time I use my camera so if you are an old hand at photography or just starting your photographic adventures, you will one day look at the photos and wonder if there is a way to improve them.

In researching this entry I found there is no general "how to" information on approaching digital photo editing. What follows is my approach. The photo editor used was Picnik.com and the steps outlined should be available in most photo editing software. The goal for the photo I selected of my daughter enjoying a hammock on the Polynesian Resort's beach was to reclaim the colors as I remembered them.

Before Digital Processing. © Scott Thomas Photography 2008	After Digital Processing. © Scott Thomas Photography 2008
Original Photo Data: Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/500s, f/10, 200 ISO, -0.3 EV, 18mm Focal Length

Step 1: EXPOSURE

The original image on the left is a bit underexposed as I had dialed in a -0.3 exposure compensation (EV). Not a drastic error yet I wanted to recoup the detail lost. In Picnik.com, I start with the Exposure tab which has two sliders for Exposure and Contrast. I first moved the Exposure slider to the right to add exposure slowly until I got back the detail. Picnik.com has an advanced button for brightness, adjusting highlight and dark areas and local contrast. I like to use the local contrast tool instead of the general contrast slider as it gives me a little more control. Your software may or may not have this option. I used a radius of 5 and strength of 25%. This brought out even more detail in the hammock and tree bark.

Step 2: COLOR

After adjusting exposure, I move on to the Color tab. Here I always first try the Auto Color button. Sometimes I like it and sometimes I don't. As they say YMMV (Your Milage My Vary). In this case, I didn't like it and hit the Reset button to start over. Next I adjusted the two sliders available. One for Temperature and one for Saturation. I set up my camera to saturate colors so I usually don't have to add any more. However, my camera settings tends to give my photos a reddish cast to light objects. In this case, the sand and hammock color is off. In some software, you may see a Blue and Red indicator on the Temperature slider. I moved the Temperature slider to the left or blue end to a -5 bringing back the natural colors to those photo elements.

Step 3: SHARPENING

I've been learning about sharpening over the last few days and was surprised to find out most digital photos need to be sharpened. Picnick.com allows for two ways to sharpen: a simple slider and a more advanced Unsharp Mask. Don't let the unsharp mask confuse you, it is a sharpening tool. The name is a hold over from film processing days. The simple slider is great and I have used it with excellent results but no higher than a setting of 10 or less. Beyond that, photos start to look unreal.

There's a whole bunch of ways people use unsharp mask tools in photo editing software. Some are very complicated and require very expensive software. However, I want to share with you three simple recipes as recommended by Scott Kelby in his book, The Digital Photography Book (page 18):

For people, set Amount to 150%, Radius to 1 pixel and Threshold to 4 levels
For cityscapes, urban and travel photography, set Amount to 65%, Radius to 3 pixels and Threshold to 2 levels
For general everyday use, set Amount to 85%, radius to 1 pixel and Threshold to 4 levels

In the example photo, I used the general recipe in Picnik.com's Unsharp Mask tool (note: Picnik.com does not have the Threshold setting).

Now, all these adjustments are to MY taste. Yours will be different. What I have found in reading about photo editing is it is very subjective to the person doing the editing. There are techniques you can learn but no rules to follow. If you own a photo editing software product, I encourage you to find Internet resources, books, and video training for it.

I am much happier with the new version of my example photograph. To see larger versions of the Before and After photos, click on either of them. I hope this gives you some ideas on how to approach your photo editing tasks.

A camera lens which has a focal length over 100mm is considered a telephoto lens. This includes the popular zoom lenses which go over 100mm. Just like a telescope, the longer the focal length, the smaller angle of view is seen through the camera's viewfinder. This has the effect of compressing objects at different distances in the field of view. Depending on the camera's depth of field or aperture setting, the objects can all be in sharp focus or just a selected object.

In the picture below of Christmas decorations down Magic Kingdom's Mainstreet USA, I compressed the wreaths, garland and Cinderella's Castle into a pleasing composition. The aperture set at f/8 kept all three subjects in focus and without the reference of buildings on either side, it's hard to tell how much distance is between them. Incidently, I took this from the Walt Disney World Railroad platform which overlooks Mainstreet USA. It's a great photographer's roost for parades, fireworks and for getting over the heads of our fellow quests.

Mainstreet Christmas Decorations. © Scott Thomas Photography 2007
Nikon D70/80-200D, 1/800s, f/8, 400 ISO, +0.3 EV, 116mm Focal Length

I promised myself I would not brood over the fact that my two blog-mates are both enjoying Mousefest at Walt Disney World today. I did attend Mousefest in 2006 so, as I looked through those photos, I found this interesting subject to talk about. I know Barrie and Lisa will be bringing us all back some great photos to share. You gals stay out of trouble, ya hear?

Further Reading: For those interested in attending future Mousefests, here's the link to the offical website: Mousefest.org

In the days of film, it was expensive and time consuming to go about cropping photos. With digital photography that is no longer the case. Even the most rudimentary photo editing software will let you crop. While it's easier to "crop" in the camera, it's not always possible. The only restriction is the size of the digital image where if you crop too much, the size of the image becomes too small.

So, why do we need to crop? Sometimes we want to adjust an image to use the Rule of Thirds, eliminate unwanted parts caught around the subject or enlarge a subject to bring it front and center. Keep in mind, cropping is NOT resizing the entire image but taking a part of the image to make a better photo.

In Minnie's Magnificent Butterfly Garden, I took this photo of the Monarch Butterfly (Danaus plexippus) during Epcot's Flower and Garden Festival. The original you see above is a bit too centered so I wanted to change the orientation from a landscape to a portrait and make the butterfly even more the main subject. To do this, I used a photo editor to select a 5x7 crop size and rotated to make it a portrait then aligned it as you see below.

Monarch Butterfly. Copyright © Scott Thomas Photography 2007
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/250s, f/8, 200 ISO, -0.7 EV, 170mm Focal Length

Further Reading: Cropping Photos :: Every Picture Tells a Story

I've been looking at all the Day After Thanksgiving sales brochures online over the past few days. There are some great deals coming out for the digital camera owner on your list. Here are some of ideas:

Camera/Lens Dependent Gifts
Memory Cards
Rechargable Batteries
UV Lens Filter
Circular Polarizer Lens Filter

Non-Dependent Gifts
Micro-Fiber lens cleaning cloth
USB External Hard Drives (many under $100)

Photography books make great gifts. Here are two of my favorites.

Bryan Peterson's Understanding Exposure - is a great book on how exposure relates to your photographs. Updated for the digital age.

The Digital Photography Book - Ever wonder how to create a photo you see in a book or magazine? This book gives you "recipes" so you won't have to wonder anymore.

And some products that I've found useful.

Giottos Rocket Blaster - keep your camera's sensor dry and clean.

Cam-Pod Camera Support - don't want to lug around a tripod? This will protect and secure your camera. Great to use on top of flat surfaces like those famous Walt Disney World garbage cans.

Bogen-Manfrotto 725B Tripod - If you do want to use a tripod, I've found this one to be a good combination of light weight and sturdiness. Comes with a carrying bag with an over the shoulder strap.

Nikon 55-200mm f/4-5.6G DX VR Zoom Lens - For the Nikon owner, this is Nikon's budget Vibration Reduction (VR) lens for their dSLR systems. I own the 18-200 with similiar technology and this lens has gotten rave reviews on popular photography forums.

I'll see you in the malls at 5am on Friday! Happy Holiday Shopping Everyone!

The definition of a prop is something used in creating or enhancing a desired effect. The entire Walt Disney World resort is full of props. Some conspicuous and some not. I'm going to show you an example of each from Disney's Animal Kingdom.

The first prop is found in Chester & Hester's Dino-Rama which is like a little scene people can get into. This was taken a few months before my youngest daughter (seen here as the driver) would be able to get her driving learners permit and my eldest daughter acting out how she feels about that. Makes for a great photo from that trip. This can be found near the tail of the large, cartoon-ish brontosaurus, which you can see, in the background.

Dino-Rama Prop.
Nikon Coolpix 995, 1/350s, f/7.5, 100 ISO, 0 EV

In the gorilla glass viewing area on the Pangani Forest Exploration Trail there are many displays of information showing the differences between a gorilla's anatomy and Man's. Here my daughters are comparing their hands to the hand prints of a 6 year old male gorilla. Again, this prop makes for a wonderful memory and photograph.

Comparing Hands.
Nikon Coolpix 995, 1/30s, f/3, 200 ISO, 0 EV

You can find props in all the parks, resorts and entertainment areas in Walt Disney World. Here's some more places you can look for on your next trip: the park bench with Roy Disney and Minnie Mouse near the flag pole on Main Street in the Magic Kingdom, stage crates near Min and Bill's Dockside Diner in the Disney-MGM Studios, parasols in the Yong Feng Shangdian Department Store in Epcot's China pavilion and a life size Buzz Lightyear outside of the World of Disney store in Downtown Disney's Marketplace. Do you have a favorite prop at Walt Disney World? I'd love to hear about them and I'll share them in a later Photo Blog entry. Just send in a Comment!

Running applications on the Internet has come a long way since portals like Yahoo and Google introduced Online Email. Now you can run spreadsheets and wordprocessors as well as figure out when you can call for your Advanced Dining Reservations at Walt Disney World.

Just recently, a new online photo editor was offically launched called Picnik which lets you do many general edits to your photos as well as add special effects, shapes, text and frames. Picnik has two versions. A Basic version which is free to use and a Premium version for $24.95 annually. Picnik currently interfaces with some of the more popular photo sharing websites such as Flickr, Picasa Web Albums, Photobucket, Webshots and even Facebook. You'll find links on the Photo Tab of Picnik for more information on how to use photos from those sites.

Before Editing. © Scott Thomas Photography 2007	After Editing. © Scott Thomas Photography 2007
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/80s, f/11, 400 ISO, -0.3 EV

I wanted to see just how good such an application might be so I created a free Picnik account and got started. Since this is an Internet application, it doesn't matter whether you are using a Windows, Linux or Mac operating system. As long as your browser supports Picnik, you'll be fine. I had no trouble using Picnik in Internet Explorer or Safari. If you don't use any of the services Picnik interfaces with, you can do what I do and upload a photo directly from your computer. You can only work on one photo at a time.

For our example, I choose a photo I took of Disney-MGM Studio's Beauty and the Beast Stage Show where I had the wrong white balance setting causing a very reddish cast to the actor's faces. Picnik has tabs across the top for Home, Photos, Edit, Create and Save & Share (see screen shot below). The Edit tab is where you start to improve your images. You can Rotate, Crop, Resize, and even fix Red-Eye. You'll find adjustment tools for Exposure, Color and Sharpen on this tab, too.

To fix my image, I started with the Exposure tool. To enter any of the tools, just click on the corresponding button. In Exposure you can add or subtract exposure and contrast using sliders. An Advaced tool is also available which shows a Histogram and adds sliders for Highlights and Shadows. In this case, I added a little exposure to lighten up the photograph. This is a good place to note that all your editing is done on the entire image. You don't have a way to selectively edit like you would in Photoshop and other simliar PC based photo editing applications.

Picnik Application (click for larger image)

The major fix I needed for this example was for color. Under the Color tab, you have Auto Color, Neutral Picker and sliders for Saturation and Color Temperature. Knowing the white balance was my main concern, I slid the color temperature slider to the left which adjusts the color cast towards the blue end of the spectrum. I had to slide it a long ways and ended up at a -65. It looked good but not quite good enough. I hit the Reset button to start over. This time I used the Auto Color button and while it looked a bit washed out at a setting of -84, the skin tones were much better. All the tools in Picnik have a Reset button. In that if you find what you are doing gets a bit odd looking, it's easy to start over. Clicking the OK button, retains the edits. I added a little sharpening in the Sharpen tool, too.

Now the fun begins. While I liked the photo, it needed "something". I entered the Create tab of the Picnik application and started trying various effects. After adjusting the color temperature earlier, I noted the photo looked a bit washed out. Using the Boost tool, I added some color back in adjusting the slider to 5 percent. This brought back a little redness to the faces but it looked more natural. I found I liked the look of adding a Matte around the subjects. You can control the size, strength and color of the matte effect. I emphasized the golden color of Belle's dress and the Prince's suit trim this way. Next, I went to the Shapes tool and added the heart shape. I changed the heart's location, size, color and fading before adding the text in the Text tool.

Once I was satisfied with everything, I went to the Save & Share tab and saved the new image back to my computer's hard drive. Be careful here. Picnik will use the same name for the edited version. Picnik might think about adding some sort of extension in a future update.

I was very impressed with how far Picnik has come in the last three months when I first discovered it. The developers keep adding new tools, controls, effects, shapes and fonts all the time. Being an Internet application, you can access it from any computer in the world. Might come in handy for doing edits from a hotel room in Walt Disney World for all you bloggers and webmasters out there. I suggest giving Picnik a try the next time you need to do some photo editing and see if it might work for you.

Earlier, I showed how the use of software can add light to a badly underexposed photo. What if I told you there was a way to do the same thing using your camera and not having to do any post-processing in software. Would that be worth something to ya?

Looking at the photo below taken at Disney's Boardwalk Resort, you can see that the background and sky are nicely exposed but the subject is in shadow because of the angle fo the sun in relation to the photographer.

Scottwdw (yep, that's me) at Disney's Boardwalk Resort © Scott Thomas Photography 2005
Nikon Coolpix 995, 1/250s, f/6.0, 100 ISO, 0 EV

After looking at the image in the camera's LCD, I instructed the photographer (my daughter) to use the camera's flash to fill in the shadows. The result you can view below.

Scottwdw (me, again) at Disney's Boardwalk Resort © Scott Thomas Photography 2005
Nikon Coolpix 995, 1/60s, f/6.0, 100 ISO, 0 EV, Flash Used

This technique is called Fill Flash as it fills in shadow and dark areas of a scene with the use of an artificial light source. In this case, the builtin flash on the camera. In digital SLR and advanced Point & Shoot cameras, you may hear the term balanced fill flash as the camera will calculate the amount of flash needed using the amount of light detected by it's light meter. You don't want the flash to overpower the available light but to add just enough to bring out darkened areas like in this example.

Further Reading: While this article talks specifically about Canon equipment, other manufacturer's cameras work in a simliar fashion. Fill-in flash use with EOS cameras and speedlites

Tower of Terror collage. © Scott Thomas Photography 2007
Nikon Coolpix 995, 1/360s, f/7.5, 100 ISO, 0 EV

I love creating new artistic works from my photographs. This one I am particularly proud of as it came together over a couple of years. I first took the picture of the Disney-MGM Studio's Tower of Terror during a trip back in 2004. I liked the clouds overhead. On a return trip a year later, I was in an hour wait queue to ride the Tower of Terror. Since I had my trusty Nikon Coolpix 995 with me, I passed the time by taking pictures of things I came upon in the queue. Disney Imagineers do a wonderful job of detail and I wanted to capture some of it.

Fast forward a couple of months and I came upon a speciality photo software package called LumaPix FotoFusion which made it very easy to create photo collages. If you are a scrapbooker, you may also want to take a look at this software. FotoFusion has frames in all shapes and sizes. There are backgrounds to choose from or you can use your own graphics or photos as was the case with mine here. It makes it easy to get started creating a collage by selecting the photos you want to use and pressing the Auto Collage button. If you don't like the first layout it comes out with, press it again. Once you see something you like, you can take over for the final arrangment of the images, change sizes of the images, put different frames and borders on them, add text in any font your computer has and use special effects like shadowing and blurs.

Taking my Tower of Terror image from 2004 as the background and grabbing a few from my queue photos in 2005, I started putting together my collage. It's a lot of fun moving the images around, selecting frames, colors and effects, even rotating them. After I got done, I wanted something more. The font wasn't creepy enough. It didn't take me long to find a Twilight Zone font on the Internet which gave an authentic look to the final product.

Photo collages are a great way to create new images from photos you had no idea what to do with.

Chistmas Mickey & Minnie. © Scott Thomas Photography 2007
Nikon D70/80-200D, 1/25s, f/4.5, 400 ISO, +0.3 EV, 80mm Focal Length

There are many ways to use our photos. Enlarge and frame them for our homes or give photographic gift items like magnets, t-shirts or buttons. With the advent of digital photography and the Internet, you can create online digital albums and slideshows complete with music. Many people think ahead and take unique family photographs and create holiday cards to send to family and friends.

This year, I wanted to use one of my photos taken last year during Mousefest in Ye Olde Christmas Shoppe in Magic Kingdom's Liberty Square. The figurine of Mickey holding misletoe over Minnie as she is closing in to give him a kiss was a delightful one I couldn't resist. I used available light in the shoppe and got close with the 80-200 zoom lens on my camera. Your feet is your best zoom lens. This allowed me to use the widest aperture and shortest focal length of the lens to get the most light onto the camera's sensor and blurring the busy background of people passing by the shop window.

Many photo software packages today have ways to create and order prints, cards, postcards and other items. I used Apple's iPhoto to place the photo on the front of the Christmas card. I liked this layout with the angled image, old English font for the text and simple blue border. Inside is a place for more text and pictures. From there it was a simple click to order the quantity I wanted.

Google's free photo editing software, Picasa, is a simple to use way to enhance, clean up or fix your digital photographs. I have been impressed with what I have learned in the few days I have used Picasa. It has given me a way to fix some high contrast images I took during this year's International Flower & Garden Festival at Epcot.

As most of you are aware, the midday Florida sun is very bright. When I came upon the Donald Duck and Pluto pirate topiaries at the entrance to World Showcase coming from Future World, it was around three in the afternoon. My first attempts had Donald and Pluto well exposed but the bright sky and clouds were blown out. The clouds looking more like unnatural white bloobs due to overexposure. Using the exposure compensation button on my camera, I adjusted it down to -1.3 EV before the sky and clouds became correctly exposed. Unfortunetaly, due to the extreme difference or contrast in the brightness of the sky and the topiaries, Donald and Pluto were now underexposed. In digital photography, it's best to expose for the brightest parts of the scene which is what I did in the photo you see below.

Donald Duck and Pluto topiaries before editing. © Scott Thomas Photography 2007
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/160s, f/13, 200 ISO, -1.3 EV, 18mm Focal Length

I'm sure you can see why I might toss this image into the trash bin. However, I had downloaded Picasa and had been learning it's capabilities. Maybe I can fix it! With a gleam in my eye, I launched Picasa and went about the task of throwing some added light on to Donald and Pluto.

Picasa has two elements to it. First is the Library which catalogs all your images on your Window's based PC (as of this writing, Picasa does not have a Mac OSX or Linux version available). You scroll through all your images on the right side of the Library's window. On the left you can set up virtual folders and see the aging of other photos by folder. You can watch slideshows, email, print and upload to Picasa Web Albums from the Library.

Double clicking on an image brings it into the Picasa Editor. On the left side, you see Picasa's tools with three tab views entitled Basic Fixes, Tuning and Effects. For my pirate topiary photo, I started out by adding some Fill Light in the Basic Fixes tab, moving the slider to the right until the detail in both Donald and Pluto could be seen clearly. This kept most of the detail in the sky and clouds without blowing them out. For this image, I didn't need any of the Tuning tools and skipped right to the Effects tab. In adding fill light, some of the color of the flowers at Donald's feet got a bit washed out or dull looking. I used the Saturation tool on the Effects tab to bring the color back. Don't overdo this effect unless you want a really cartoonish look to your photo. I applied just a bit here. As you'll read in most photo editing books, I applied sharpening as the last step in the photo editng process. Here again, you don't want to give it too much or the photo looks unreal. I clicked on the Sharpened tool just once.

Donald Duck and Pluto topiaries after editing in Picasa. © Scott Thomas Photography 2007

All done! What do you think? For a free photo editor, Picasa did an excellent job. Oh, and another thing, when I saved the edited version, Picasa saved my original in a separate folder. Picasa is far from PhotoShop but you can't beat the price for such an easy and useful photo editing tool.

Further Reading: I have only shown you a bit of what Picasa can do. Google's Online Tour of Picasa goes into much more detail than I have room for here.

Not all light is pure white and will have a certain color temperature. Engineers express this in degrees Kelvin which you might have used in your high school physics or chemistry classes. Our eyes see color temperature as color casts like blue, green or red. Have you ever taken a picture and have it look bluish or greenish when you see it just fine? That is because your camera's White Balance setting sees color temperatures. Our brain "knows" what color you are looking at so it adjusts for color temperatures that are not too extreme. Digital cameras are getting better automatically adjusting white balance with each new model but they are not there yet.

What do we do to get the right color? Digital camera designers and engineers have given us several ways to adjust the white balance and even fine tune it. Depending on your camera, look up white balance settings in the manual. You should see similiar settngs as these with a brief description: Auto or AWB, Incandescent (sometimes referred to as Tungsten or Indoor), Daylight or Sunny, Cloudy, Flash, Shade and Fluorescent. On the camera itself, these different settings are represented by icons. You may want to copy this information and carry it with you for reference. Those icons can get confusing. On most digital SLRs, you can also fine tune these settings further. On my Nikon D70, I can adjust plus or minus up to 3. For example, I often use Auto -3, which gives me very vivid colors, especially reds and yellows. It can sometimes give me too much red as evidenced below in my photo of Ariel during the Voyage of the Little Mermaid stage show at the Disney-MGM Studios. Not only is her hair a flaming red so is her skin!

Ariel with bad white balance setting. © Scott Thomas Photography 2007
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/15s, f/5.6, 640 ISO, -1 EV, 150mm Focal Length

Another photographer, Mark Barbieri, shows us how to set the white balance correctly. Notice Ariel's skin color is what we see during the show and how I expect the Disney Imagineers wanted us to see her. I'd like to thank Mark for allowng me to use this photograph.

Ariel with good white balance setting. © Mark Barbieri

As always, you should practice using each of the white balance settings. For instance, the Shade white balance setting will warm up colors in a scene as shade looks bluish to a camera. That doesn't mean you have to use it in shade, it will warm up a sunset just as nicely. Investigate how others are using their white balance settings on the camera you own. Photography forums have lots of information on creative uses of white balance.

Further Reading: How to Set White Balance

Cinderella's Castle in the Magic Kingdom. © Scott Thomas Photography 2007
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/250s, f/8, 400 ISO, -0.3 EV, 80mm Focal Length

This proves how popular Cinderella's Castle really is. Just a few entries after Barrie posted about this most photographed object at Walt Disney World and here I am using this photo. I know many try to capture a unique view of the castle. I wish I could say I was trying to here. It just sort of happened and I will tell you about it soon.

Since I wanted my entries to be titled using the Epcot word of "innoventions", I want to share with you a very innovative software product I found. In my travels to many photography websites and forums, I saw other people putting lovely and informative virtual borders around their photographs. My inquires found most used various versions of Adobe Photoshop or Elements to do so. I searched for a less expensive (read: free) alternative. I finally found a product called BorderMaker by programmer Thijs Orbitz from the Netherlands. It fit my needs perfectly.

BorderMaker is very easy to use. The website has some screenshots with very little documentation but it only took me 10 minutes to get the results you see above. Before installing BorderMaker, you have to make sure you have the latest version of the Java Runtime Environment. Don't worry, it's not complicated. Once that is done, you can download and install BorderMaker with ease.

With BorderMaker, you can easily create custom border templates you can save for reuse or to batch process a set of pictures. It can auto-select border and text colors depending on a photograph's color range. Other handy features let you convert a photo to other formats, show Exif data, apply sharpening, add watermarks and even resize the processed image. In the example below, I let BorderMaker choose the border and text color initially. I changed the bottom two lines of text to red. I found the Indy font online and stretched the bottom border to accommodate all the text. The software made this very easy to do.

Another BorderMaker Example. © Scott Thomas Photography 2007

Now, how did I get the image of Cinderella's Castle? About 20 minutes after sunset this past May, I got on the Tomorrowland Transit Authority (most old timers still call this the WEDway People Mover) for a leisurely ride around Tommorrowland. As I came upon the first turn past Stitch's Great Escape, I noticed Cinderella's Castle silhouetted against the pre-twilight sky and took a picture. The first one didn't come out to well as my ISO setting was at 200 so the shutter speed was too slow. I got a very blurred image. I quickly bumped up the ISO to 400 and took a couple of practice shots before entering Space Mountain. From those shots I was ready. Upon coming back out above the Tommorowland Terrace Noodle Station, I went to work. Zooming in a bit, I took a series of shots with this one coming out the best. Some photos call for a title, this one was easy: "Castle at Dusk". I think the virtural border gives the added attention this photograph deserves.

Lights, Motors, Action! Extreme Stunt Show explosive finale. © Scott Thomas Photography 2007
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/250s, f/8, 200 ISO, 0 EV, 20mm Focal Length

Don't go away! Histograms are not hard to understand. They are a great tool for us digital photographers to know, at a glance, if the picture we just took is well exposed. No more being disappointed when we see the photos on our large computer screens that looked so good on the camera's little LCD. If you are not sure if your camera is able to show a histogram, check its manual.

Simply put, a histogram is a graph that displays how light is distributed in your picture. The left side of the graph represents the shadows (dark areas), while the highlights (light areas) are on the right. Remember bell curves from your old math or statistical classes? Rarely does a histogram from a photo take on the look of a perfect bell curve but the principal is the same. You do not want to see the curve bunch up to either side or get cut off which is referred to as a clipped histogram. A clipped histogram to either the left (dark) or right (light) side is something to be avoided. In the histogram example shown here, while there is a spike on the dark side, it is not clipped and falls off before the edge. The spike can be seen in the dark upper portions of the image.

By taking a photograph and looking at the histogram my camera shows me, I can tell if I have overexposed (histogram pushed to the right side or cut off) portions or all of the image. From there, I can adjust my exposure using the exposure compensation button. I may need to change the ISO setting if the histogram is showing a very underexposed (everything pushed or cut off on the left side of the graph) to increase the sensor's light sensitivity moving the histogram towards the center.

Take this entry's photo from the Disney-MGM Studios Lights, Motors, Action! Extreme Stunt Show. I had to be quick with this shot as the car flu over the ramp faster than I was ready for. Checking the LCD image afterwards, I felt it looked good. Once I saw the well-distributed histogram, I was confident it was good.

As you can tell, the histogram is an excellent way to see if you have the exposure you are looking for quickly and easily.

Further Reading: I highly recommend this article on histograms: Understanding Your Digital Camera's Histogram.

Negative Exposure Compensation of -0.3 EV. © Scott Thomas Photography 2007 Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/125s, f5.6, 200 ISO	Positive Exposure Compensation of +0.3 EV. © Scott Thomas Photography 2007 Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/50s, f5.6, 200 ISO

Exposure Compensation allows you to adjust the exposure measured by the camera's light meter and telling the camera to allow more light in (positive exposure compensation) or less light in (negative exposure compensation). On your digital SLR camera, look for a +/- button to press to adjust exposure compensation. By making it negative, zero or postive in 1/3 (0.3) or 1/2 (0.5) intervals, you "dial" in the exposure for the photograph. As you change the exposure compensation, your camera will change it's shutter speed or aperture. Sometimes, even both, as you alter how the camera's light meter is "seeing" the subject you are pointing at.

In the two photos of the Research Station camp taken on the Pangani Forest Exploration Trail in Disney's Animal Kingdom, the one on the left has a -0.3 EV (EV is the standard way of indicating exposure compensation) giving a rich color to the green foliage and detail in the rock face. The shutter speed of 1/125s freezes the waterfall. The photo on the right has a +0.3 EV, see how the contrast is heightened and some of the objects near the front of the tent get "blown out", which means the loss of detail, as the shutter speed decreased to 1/50s. Some of the shadowy areas now have details and the waterfall has a whispy look. The rule of thumb is to expose for the highlights, the brightest part of the scene, which is what I did in the photo on the left.

How do you know which exposure is best? You don't really, you pick the one you like the best. For me, I try not to get any blown out areas in my photos. This is not always possible. I hedge my bets by bracketing the exposures. Bracketing is taking one photo each at a negative compensation, a zero compensation and a postive compensation. Most digital cameras today can be set to auto-bracket and take a series of 3 to 5 photographs in a single shutter release.

Quick Tip: Do you know how much exposure compensation range your camera has? My Nikon D70 can go plus(+) or minus(-) up to 5 stops in 1/3 or 1/2 intervals. Don't be afraid to go as high or low as you need to capture the photograph.

Copyright © 2007 Barrie Brewer, Nikon D50/18-200VR, 0.002s shutter, f5.6

It doesn’t take many hamburgers, funnel cakes and chicken fingers for me to start craving the fresh “California Cuisine” offered at Wolfgang Puck Café at Downtown Disney’s Westside. I’ve never been disappointed with a meal that I’ve had there. On my last trip I had a very tasty broiled halibut that was cooked to perfection. I also like their pizzas and Sushi.

In addition to their regular dining room and outdoor seating, Wolfgang’s has an open kitchen with counter seating and a sushi bar. I often go to Disney World on solo trips to take photos and I find Wolfgang Puck’s a very comfortable place to dine alone. It’s also one of the restaurants on the Dining Plan.

For a more upscale experience, check out The Dining Room at Wolfgang Puck’s (upstairs).

Quick Tip: This photo was taken just as the sun began to rise. The best light for taking photos is at sunrise and sunset. During the middle of the day the sun is often too harsh and can wash out the colors in your photograph. When the sun is low in the sky it gives a soft glow to your photos that is very pleasing. Even if you’re not really a morning person you can still get great morning shots at Disney World. This was taken from the balcony of my room at Saratoga Springs while I was still in my jammies!

Spaceship Earth. Copyright © Scott Thomas Photography 2007
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/10s, f/5.6, 1600 ISO, -1 EC, 135mm Focal Length

Many people have sent in questions about how to get good low-light and night photography pictures at Walt Disney World. The key is to get enough light to your digital camera's sensor to record a well exposed image. You can do this a couple of ways. Use a tripod and increase the shutter speed or increase your camera's sensitivity to light. The higher the ISO setting, the more sensitive the sensor becomes and less light needed to record an image. Instead of using a tripod at ISO 100, you can dial in a higher setting like 400, 800 or 1600 and get a faster shutter speed. Thus, letting you hand hold in low light or in getting fast action shots like themepark rides, children playing or sporting events.

Epcot's Spaceship Earth is a favorite subject of many photographers during the day but, at night, the geodesic sphere takes on a surreal quality. To successfully show this, I increased my ISO setting to 1600. This is the highest my camera, a Nikon D70, can go. There are digital cameras today that go as high as 3200 ISO. I still needed a steady hand, propped elbows on a fence and a vibration reduction lens to shoot at 1/10s. To increase my chances of getting a great photo, I took a series of them with this being the best of the lot.

Shooting at such high ISO settings does bring about an increase in noise. Noise looks like color speckles and is noticed in uniform colors like the black sky in the Spaceship Earth photo. While it is a concern in digital photography, noise is a lot less apparent then with high ISO films. Those would show large grain in the processed prints. There are many software products available to reduce any noise which does creep into our photos.

Obviously, the less noise the better so, the lower the ISO, the finer the images your camera will produce. Check out your camera's manual to see how you can change the ISO and how high and low the settings are.

Quick Tip: Some digital cameras have an Auto ISO Setting. My Nikon D70 does and it allows me to let the camera pick the best ISO for the available light. This comes in handy as the light changes throughout the day into night or going in and out of buildings and rides at Walt Disney World.

As we learned earlier, aperture is the size of the opening in the camera's lens measured in f-stops. I know it sounds weird but the smaller the f-stop number the larger the opening. I want to show you today how you can take advantage of apertures to create outstanding photographs.

Maximum Depth of Field or Hyperfocus. Copyright © Scott Thomas Photography 2007
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/500s, f/11, -1.3 EC, 18mm Focal Length

The first technique is called hyperfocus and getting the maximum depth of field in a photo. This is where everything in the photo is in focus from the closest to the farthest objects out to infinity. Searching on hyperfocus will bring up all kinds of calculators on how to figure out where to focus when using a certain focal length (18, 28, 35, etc. in mm) and f-stop. By setting the aperture to an f-stop of f/11 or f/16 and focusing on a close subject, you'll get the hyperfocus effect. In the photo taken from Epcot's Flower and Garden Festival of the floating flowers, I wanted people to view this photo starting with the floating flower pot at the bottom and continue upwards to the clouds in the sky. This is how imagineeers use forced perspective throughout the parks to makes things look bigger than they actually are.

Selective Focus. Copyright © Scott Thomas Photography 2007
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/250s, f/5.6, -0.3 EC, 200mm Focal Length

What do you do if the background of the subject you want to photograph is busy? If you used a high f-stop, your subject could get lost in that busy background. For this situation you want to use a smaller f-stop or do, what is called, shooting with your lens wide open. This is done by setting the aperture at it's lowest f-stop. For my 18-200mm VR zoom lens at 200mm, it's wide open f-stop is f/5.6, which is what I used to separate and selectively focus on the meerkat at Disney's Animal Kingdom from the foliage in the distance. In this way, you are focused on the meerkat and not what is behind him. This is a great way to take human portraits at Walt Disney World and not get all those other humans in the background.

Quick Tip: I know some of you are thinking how do you set apertures using a digital camera. You do this by setting the camera's shooting mode to Aperture Priority. Refer to your camera's manual on how to do this. Once done, you set your f-stop and the camera calculates the shutter speed. Be careful here. If the aperture chosen is making your shutter speed to long, you may need to either make your aperture bigger or use a tripod.