Picture This!

At speed on Test Track's high banked turns in Epcot.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/40s, f/8, 200 ISO, -0.3 EV, 18mm Focal Length

I'm a big NASCAR fan. I even did Richard Petty's Driving Experience once at Walt Disney World. For my Disney Pic of the Week featuring a Ride, I picked the next best thing to feeling like you are on a big track which is riding the high banks on Test Track in Epcot's Future World. In this picture I sat in the back seat to get more of the car, slowed the camera's shutter speed down to capture the motion of the car on the track and rode it late in the day for better lighting. I secured the camera with the strap around my neck and looped around my wrists.

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.

Here is a photography rule which I read about when researching the previous blog on the Sunny 16 Rule I wrote about last time. This one is called the Rule of Odds. The rule states an odd number of objects should be sought out for a shot. This results in a natural framing of the objects, adding comfort and depth to the artwork.

Okay, though I tend to put 1, 3 or more odd numbered subjects in my photos than even numbers, I pay more attention to the Rule of Thirds when I am composing in the viewfinder. However, it looks like Disney Imagineers use this rule. Below is a photo of the five balloons which hang from the ceiling in Epcot's Land Pavilion. The middle one represents Earth while the four surrounding balloons represent the seasons: Yellow for Summer, Orange for Fall, Blue for Winter and Green for Spring.

The odd numbered balloons hanging from the ceiling of The Land pavilion in Epcot.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/60s, f/4.5, 200 ISO, 36mm Focal length

Again, I don't purposely go out and look for an odd number when I am composing my photographs. Since this is a compositional rule and, like all rules in photography, they are more like guidelines anyway (now, where have we heard that before?), I wouldn't go out of my way to do this. It's something to keep in mind when you have time to do so.

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!