This is the second of two blog posts where I’m sharing pictures from my 2011 trip to Disney World in Orlando, FL. In Part 1 I shared a few pictures from Epcot and from Disney’s Animal Kingdom. If you missed Part 1 you can check it out here. For this entry I’ll be sharing some images from Disney’s Hollywood Studios and from the Magic Kingdom.

Disney’s Hollywood Studios

Disney’s Hollywood studios may not be my favorite of the four main theme parks but it really provides some incredible photography opportunities. It’s a beautiful park with plenty of colors but for some reason I always see my pictures as black and white when I’m there. If I get an incredible sky filled with clouds it just makes the black and white treatment that much more dramatic. I know that I said that Disney’s Hollywood Studios wasn’t my favorite theme park but when you have four parks one of them has to come in fourth. I still love the park and I enjoy taking pictures there, but the other three parks are just a little better in my book.

The Magic Kingdom

Of all the pictures I took at Disney World in 2011 the picture above is one of my all time favorites. On this evening I lucked into a perfect location and incredible skies. If memory serves me it rained earlier in the day and that always adds drama to the skies around sunset. This location was also the place where I photographed the fireworks.

And even though photographing fireworks is a ton of fun, there’s other things to take pictures of when the lights dim at the Magic Kingdom. Among my favorites is the Electrical Parade.

I’m often asked about my Electrical Parade shots. “how do you get your shots to look like that” is a popular question. The answer is that I treat the electrical parade the same way I would treat a concert shoot. Alan Hess wrote two great books that are a big help for shooting in lower light situations and his Concert Photography Book is one of my favorites.

If you apply the same techniques to this kind of parade that you’d apply to a concert shoot you’ll get some incredible results. For the record – I shoot in manual mode (letting me choose Aperture and shutter speed instead of having the situation confuse my camera) and I go with a super high ISO setting (I can deal with any noise in Lightroom or Photoshop). By not using a flash or an automatic mode (like Aperture priority) I can get the shot I’m looking to capture instead of having the camera/flash get what it thinks is an ideal exposure.

In addition to fireworks and light parades there’s rides, activities and food. Here’s a few more shots from my 2011 visit to the Magic Kingdom:

And since I called these two blog entries Disney World Memories I’ll share the image that brings the biggest smile to my face and represents what a Disney World memory means to me. Here’s a picture of my wonderful girlfriend Deb and I in a photograph captured by my good friend Mark Tremonti at the most magical place on Earth:

Thanks for reading this far and I hope you enjoyed the images and sharing some of my memories from Disney World 2011.