The first parts of this series had statements about the abundance of subject matter you can encounter there, and Hollywood Studios is no exception. Being thrust into a photographically rich environment is fun, but can also distract you from thinking about composition and getting the best image quality in camera by making sure you nail exposure etc. You end up just trying to quickly photograph EVERYTHING. Also, to compound this, if you are with someone or with a group of people, it is probably annoying for them to wait around for you while you fiddle with camera settings. I try not to let photography distract me from the true reason I go to the parks, but it is quite hard sometimes when there are so many cool things to be photographed. Early in this blog's (short) history I wrote a post about my "introduction to long exposure photography". Most, if not all of the images featured were of an abstract nature and all were taken at the Disney parks. I figured I would expand on that and show some additional abstract photos specific to this park. =)

   

Abstract photography is not everyone's cup of tea, but I think that allowing this genre to your library or portfolio shows that you aren't afraid to let go of all the rules and create something where the subject itself is the image. Hollywood Studios is great for this type of photography, but I think this could be said about theme parks in general. There are often bright lights and abstract shapes that come in the form of attractions, silhouettes or masses of people. At Hollywood Studios... masses of people are not in short demand. 

I think there are two types of people photography to be had at Hollywood studios. The first is what would be considered traditional street photography. Here I am talking about photographing subjects who are either working or visiting the parks in relatively normal garb. The photo can be taken with a wide angle lens to give some context to the situation, or be taken with a longer lens to allow for subject isolation. The second type is what I would call "actor photography" and involves photographing people at the park who are employed as street or stage performers. This type can also be taken using a wide angle lens, but for the most part actors remain some distance away from you in which case a portrait or telephoto lens is needed. 

I enjoy both of these types, but would venture to say that photographing actors (especially the street comedians) is easier because they convey a lot of emotion. This in turn translates into a more "moving" photo and if you enjoy capturing peoples' expressions then this park is the place to visit! You should also visit because of the attractions!! I think out of all the parks, the rides at Hollywood Studios are the best, if not, definitely the most "adult oriented". Before I met my partner I was absolutely terrified of roller coasters... even the little kid ones like "Primordial Whirl" at Animal Kingdom. I forced myself to get on one at a boardwalk in Texas and it was a HORRIBLY SCARY, but life changing experience. Now I cannot get enough, I want to go backwards, upside down, 150 mph, you name it! Moral of the story is: ride the "Rockin Rollercoaster"... you won't regret it. And while you are at it, travel into the Twilight Zone and have your insides re-arranged by the Tower of Terror. Star Tours is also a blast because each time you ride it, the story is a little different. Really there are so many things to do at Hollywood Studios from the live action shows (including Indiana Jones and the Little Mermaid) to eating at pizza planet after being educated in movie production and it's history. The list goes on and on. Plus, if you go around Christmas, the Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights is a MUST SEE!! I have already written about the Spectacle but only posted photos taken with the third party fisheye available for micro four thirds. 

Truly there is a plethora of fun at Disney, but one of my absolute favorite things in all of the four parks is Fantasmic. If ever there was an attraction not to skip... this is it. All the Disney movies that I loved growing up are showcased here in a sort of ultimate battle between good and evil. Depsite Fantasmic's amazingness, photographing the show has proven a bit difficult for me. I can never settle on a focal length because there are times when you want to capture the scene as a whole, and times when you want to focus on one element. On my first two attempts here, I used manual focus lenses which was a GIANT mistake. I do not recommend trying it, there is so much action and it was near impossible to focus on anything. The last time I saw it I tried using the MZD 40-150mm kit zoom and photos were a little better, but more often than not blurry because I had to use a relatively slow shutter speed to combat the lens' "dark" nature. I probably should have used the 45mm f/1.8 portrait lens, but again felt I needed some REACH. Another problem is that if you sit in the front, you and your gear end up getting continually misted so once you pick a lens your stuck there unless you want to risk getting your sensor wet during a lens swap. I bet the 75mm f/1.8 would work magic here, but it may be too long to effectively photograph some scenes. Oh well, C'est la vie, here are my attempts :)

50 mm

150 mm

40 mm

120 mm

135 mm

I think besides getting some good firework photos at Cinderella's castle, getting some really stellar shots of Fantasmic is one of my photography goals. I will probably use the MZD 45mm portrait lens next time ad see how that works out. Also, sometime this year, Olympus is supposed to release a 40-150mm f/2.8 which I bet would fit the bill to capture some great photos of Fantasmic, but then again I have a feeling that price tag is going to scare me off. Again, like I said in the EPCOT post, the photos I presented are really only a glimpse into what the park has to offer and you could spend all day on photography there. If it is your first time, I don't recommend this... just go with the intention of having fun and make photography a second priority. That is another reason why I love the micro four thirds system. It's compact, light, and inconspicuous, but still (at least in my opinion) delivers great image quality. I can be at the parks for a week with the EM5 around my neck and really the only time I notice it is when I need to put it away to ride something. In the end though, it doesn't really matter what system you use. Gear should only be used as a tool used to express your vision as a photographer. I am so excited for the next post on Magic Kingdom. Infact I feel that I will have to compile two seperate entries on this park alone to really do it justice. I am struggling with ideas for seperation, but in the mean time, I hope you enjoy what I have put together so far. Also Happy Valentines Day!!!

Sam. D

Walt Disney World Series:

Part I: Introduction
Part II: Animal Kingdom
Part III: EPCOT
Part IV: Post Processing in China
Part V: Hollywood Studios

When setting out to do this Walt Disney World series, I wanted to not only showcase photos, but also provide some insight into my workflow. "Tips and Tricks" if you will. I realized that I had not really done that yet and decided to delay the Hollywood Studios post to focus on how I processed the image above from EPCOT. This will also show how I process some of my Fisheye photos to give them a more natural look by correcting for distoriton in Lightroom. I have been wanting to do this for some time and including it as part of this series worked out nicely. Correcting for distortion in Lightroom is different from using de-fishing software and this technique does not fully correct for bent lines. In the end, cropping is needed, however I found that in most cases this has been sufficient for my needs.

Unedited RAW

So before I get into talking about post processing, how (and why) was this photo taken in the first place? As my partner and I were leaving the park after the IllumiNations show one night I noticed that the China exhibit was completely DEAD. Not a soul in sight. I saw this as a great opportunity and decided I was going to try and capture the tranquil scene. I haven't had the desire to lug around a tripod into the parks so I found the nearest trash can to serve it's purpose (see here and here for articles on tripod alternatives). You can see it in the bottom section of the photo above, but I knew before hand it would likely be cropped out when I corrected for distortion so it being there did not concern me.

100% center crop

Working with the third party fisheye, I shot this wide open at f/3.5 and use the magnify function on the EM5 to ensure I was focused on the building. I then enabled the EM5's live bulb mode and did a couple of test shots to gauge where my exposure needed to be. [As a digression] This is a good trick if you do not have a remote shutter release. In order to minimize the movements from pressing, holding and releasing the shutter, you simply do some test shots using this method, set your camera to shoot with a 2 sec delay and use the info gained from shooting in live bulb mode to set a concrete exposure level... I hope this makes sense. For this photo, I chose a 4 sec exposure at the camera's lowest "gain", iso200 at the time (since then a firmware update has enabled "iso 100" on the EM5). 

Correct for distortion and crop

My next step was to correct for distortion and crop the photo. The distortion slider can be found under the "Lens Corrections" tab under the "Manual" heading. I pulled the slider all the way to 100 and took the trash (bottom) can and bent railing post (left) out of the equation.

Huelight

I use a correction profile specific to the EM5 before I begin to process anything that has to do with color or dynamic range. The EM5 has great JPEG color processing so using the profile is just an attempt at mimicking the way Olympus processes color info. Using the profile is something that I have come into the habit of doing (and incorporated into all my presets), but differences are subtle so if you do not have a correction profile don't fret. If you are interested, huelight's profiles can be found here (discussion) and are only $10 so getting them shouldn't break the bank.

Dynamic range

Once I have chosen the color profile (comes in Low, Standard and High contrast), I adjust White Balance, Tone, and Presence using the sliders provided in LR4. The original photo had a green-orange cast to it which I tried to correct for using the dropper tool under the WB heading. I used the dropper on the wall close to the center of the photo and it got me close, but I made finer adjustments to my liking after. Overall, the photo was dark so I increased the "Shadows" and "Blacks" sliders to brighten it up a bit. To make up for the blown highlights that resulted, I decreased the "Highlights" slider and zoomed in to make sure I could still make out detail in the building's highlights. I then increased clarity, vibrance and saturation a bit for good measure. Overall I am trying to optimize how the building looks since it is my main subject.

Color

Next I adjusted the color sliders to my liking. I wanted to get rid of the remaining yellow cast and make the building more vibrant. I did this by reducing "yellow's" saturation, and increasing the "red" and "orange" channels. I also played with the luminance of each of the colors which brightens or darkens each of them. I darkened the blue channel in hopes of darkening the sky and overall, the resultant photo has a cooler tone. There is really no right or wrong way to do this, it is based on persona taste. Again, I am trying to make the building stand out as much as possible.

Burn 

The foreground in the photo was kind of dark so I use the Adjustment Brush to "burn" or lighten it. To do this I simply pulled the "Shadows" slider to the right and then added a bit of contrast and clarity. I also de-saturated the area completely, and added a beige cast to neutralize the entire foreground. The red you see above is just a preview of everywhere this effect will take place.

Dodge

Next, I dodge (or darken) the sky be decreasing the exposure slider to -2.5. In order to not get rid of the few stars I captured and to make sure I don't darken the building I set the highlights slider to 100. Here are the results before and after dodging and burning:

Before

After

Overall, I am now happy with the image and all that is left to do is some housekeeping. To do this I go to the "Details" tab in light room. 

Housekeeping

When you import an .ORF image into lightroom it automatically applies sharpening and color noise reduction. ON TOP of this I slightly increase my luminance noise reduction and more importantly, add a mask to sharpening. In my opinion masking should be done to all your photos so that you only sharpen the important bits of a photo. On a PC if you hold down your "ALT" key while moving the masking slider a preview of the mask is displayed. In the example above, everything that is white will be sharpened and everything that is black will not be. Masking can help to avoid sharpening empty space which can lead to distracting artifacts in your image. 

50/50

The final step to adding my signature to this image involves split toning. I usually do this to offshore images in which I want to add a subtle golden cast to. I decided this image could benefit from this because the foreground was too "gray" and I wanted to bring out the ivory in the hand railing. To do this I go to the "Split Toning" tab and type in "50" for hue, and "50" for saturation under "Highlights". The difference is barely noticeable, but this is one of my favorite and most used split toning combinations. 

Comparison

Looking at the comparison between the original and final image, you can see that a little work in Lightroom can go a long way. I do not usually do this extensive editing on my images unless I can see a lot of potential in them. Usually my workflow consists of using presets that I and others have some up with. I would guess that only 30% of the images I process have some sort of dodging and burning applied to them but here it was pretty crucial in making the foreground stand out. I am self-taught in Lightroom so if you have any suggestions they would be received with open arms. Also, if you have any questions about this images' workflow (or any others you see on this blog) feel free to drop me a line. Next up in this Disney series is Hollywood Studios!

Sam D.

Walt Disney World Series:

Part I: Introduction
Part II: Animal Kingdom
Part III: EPCOT
Part IV: Post Processing in China
Part V: Hollywood Studios

A few days ago, one of my best friends and fellow micro four thirds enthusiasts (check out his Flickr here) suggested I try out the Enfuse HDR Plugin for Lightroom. It can be found here, and for a monetary donation of your choice, you are granted access to the full version of the app. I wanted to share my first run of images processed using it. Ill admit now that the following photos are not the most interesting, but they do give an example of what Enfuse is capable of. I will start with showing how I came up with the introductory shot. The photos for this were taken by turning on the "exposure bracketing" mode on my EM5 to "5 photos at 1 exposure value difference". In addition I switched my shooting mode to "high speed burst pulse". I don't have a tripod offshore so I rested my camera on the hand rail shown and held down the shutter button. I was shooting in "manual" mode and the aperture on my 7.5mm fisheye was set to f/5.6. Therefore, the camera changed the exposure by altering the shutter speed. Below is a screen grab of the 4 resultant photos whose shutter speeds were (top left to bottom right) 1/500, 1/250, 1/60, 1/30:

To run Enfuse, I followed the directions published by "HDR Guide" that can be found here. The suggestion is to use at least 5 exposure levels and to do a "global edit" on the series of photos before you run the plug in. For the global edit, I used "Punch" under the "Lightroom General Presets" heading. I chose this preset because it only adds a bit of clarity and color saturation... nothing too drastic. After the global edits were made I ran the series through Enfuse which automagically imported this TIFF file back into Lightroom: 

As you can see, the photo above is more "balanced" compared to the four that were used to make it. Here, the foreground railing is not under exposed and the background sunrise does not exhibit blown out highlights. On a bit of a side note, I have come into the habit of correcting the photos I take with the 7.5mm third party fisheye for distortion. The following is a screen grab of what this looks like:

After cropping, I processed the photo to taste by adjusting the tone, increasing the clarity, muting the colors, and adding a gold overlay using "split toning". I chose increased contrast and a warm overlay because I wanted the the photo convey a sense of nostalgia. However, there is a wide range of options here. 

I think the plugin works great at giving you natural looking photos in cases when getting a proper exposure is difficult. The following are examples of such instances:

A) Subject is back-lit: Sure I could have composed this so that the sun was out of the picture, but I simply enjoyed the flare it provided. If I were to have only exposed for the sunlight then details in the lens would have been lost. If I had exposed to bring out the details in the lens, then the sky would have been blown out. Layering five photos using Enfuse provided a great solution.    

B) Subject is heavily shaded: Here, my focal point in this photo was in the shade and like the "backlit situation", simply exposing for the chain would have led to a blown out sky. Using Enfuse allowed me to retain details in both the foreground and background all while still producing a natural looking photo.

C) Subject itself is an intense light source: It would have been very difficult for me to photograph the sun here and retain both detail in the clouds and water without the use of Enfuse.

Even if the thought of over processed, insanely saturated, hard to look at HDR photos makes you run for the hills, you shouldn't discount the tasteful side of this type of photography. The concepts behind HDR deal with exposure and in part learning how to read a histogram. The following articles published by The Phoblographer were a great introduction for me:

The Phoblographer's Guide to The Histogram(Part 1)

The Phoblographer's Guide to The Histogram(Part 2)

The Basics of Photography: H for HDR

If you get a chance, I highly recommend you check out Enfuse. Once you get a handle on how it operates it is extremely easy to use and a great introduction to (tasteful) HDR.

Sam D.