I’m fascinated by making images of the art and craft of others. Every man made structure has a visual element to it. Something that should or could be pleasing to the eye. I don’t think of making these images as copying someone’s art. I think of it as celebrating their very real creativity. The Tree of Life at Walt Disney World’s Animal Kingdom is that kind of object. The Tree of Life is the work of many artisans based on the imagination of those that make it special.
At the beginning of August I was out shooting the almost full moon. It was a clear night and I did get good images using my standard exposure set up for moon shoots. If you want to get good images of the moon start with a medium aperture like F8 and shutter speed of 1/250. Try the lowest ISO you can get way with. You have to shoot in manual mode. A tripod will help but if you are using the Fujinon XF100-400mmF4.5-5.6 R LM OIS WR you can probably get a good image like the one below handheld using the OIS. The photo was shot with the Fujinon XF1.4X TC WR tele-converter for a reach of 560mm.
As it happened Jupiter and Saturn were also visible that night. The moon would pass in front of the planets later in the evening. On a lark I pointed my camera in the direction of Saturn not expecting to get much as the viewfinder was not sensitive enough to pick up the small amount of light from that planet.
I brought the images into Capture One and did my normal processing on the moon image which came to my liking. For those of you wanting to take images of the moon try doing it just before the full moon as the shadows give definition. I then turned my attention to the frame with what I hoped contained Saturn. I did see something in the frame. I ended up opening up the exposure by over two stops but there, small but visible was Saturn and her rings.
You know that Saturn has rings and you can find it any night it’s in the sky but unless you look closer you just don’t see the rings. As I pulled up the exposure and saw the rings it was like I was discovering it for the first time. Made my day.
Having raved on about color balance in the previous post, i’ve come full circle with this image. After the usual Florida afternoon storm the sunset the other day had plenty of clouds to reflect of off before getting to the Contemporary Resort at Walt Disney World. To pick up the warm tones on the building I let the fluorescent lights keep their green cast. The color cast may have been enhanced by shooting through a window .
Today my mindset is on what the image looks like rather than what camera and lens was used. How the images was processes should not be an issue either. I present the image as it is. And it is an image I like more and more.
Still if you must know it was originally processed in Capture One Pro 20 then sent to Photoshop where I applied Nik 3.0 Color Efex Pro 4 Detail Extractor, Glamor Glow, and Pro Contrast. I also did some noise reduction with Nik 3.0 Define 2.
I shot the image with the Fujinon XF18-55mmF2.8-4 R LM OIS kit lens. A really good lens for a “kit” lens.
They painted the castle in The Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World. I’m not a big fan of the paint colors. The colors they ended up with just seem to be out of balance for me. They have a saturated purple for the turrets, and saturated grey for the base, and then an almost pink but not quite color on the body of the castle. It’s mostly the pink that I find unbalanced. The purple and pink almost fit into a Triadic color scheme but doesn’t quite work as there should be a green with those two colors to make it Triadic.
When you are creating an image in studio and especially with model you have lots of leeway with you color grading. When you are documenting an place that is designed to be seen with a standard color you need to be more accurate with you color representation. You can go wrong if you push the white balance the wrong way or if you over saturate the colors. This building just seems to me to be out of balance from a color standpoint.
I could make the pinkish color more pink and at a good saturation but with Capture One Color Editor but it wouldn’t be true to the actual colors and that is where I feel the actual building colors are out of balance. And you can’t go around overriding the Disney experts.
As I was doing some research into the colors I decided to look to see what the colors of Sleeping Beauty’s Castle at Disneyland are. They basically just duplicated what they had before in Anaheim, CA It seems that the colors were painted with about the same pallet they used to upgrade the castle in 2019. The difference is the pinks are much more pink. Maybe something got lost in translation.
The new color scheme to me is to dark. It diminishes the scale of the castle. Something you always need to keep mind as you process your color images. just as a image with a tilted horizon is out of balance, a color scheme can be out of balance too. For good instruction on color and color grading watch this video by Joanna Kustra
