A Day at MK with the Coolest Skies!

I finally got finished sorting, cropping, resizing, and uploading my photos from last weekend's trip - and I wanted to start off with Magic Kingdom, mostly because the entire day, there were the coolest looking skies that really made for some fun or interesting shooting. ; I hinted at them with my unedited posts from Disney, but wanted to share some others, and the 'cleaned up' and official versions of some of those shots.

First, the daytime shots, where the skies were blue and filled with layers and ridges of high clouds that still let some sun through but made some cool textures...

Frontierland building - using the in-camera HDR to catch the light on the building and that sky:


Big Thunder Mountain took on some cool old west look with those clouds too:


Looking down the river:


A look at Rapunzel's tower, peeking up near Haunted Mansion:


As sunset approached, those clouds got even cooler - here's an in-camera HDR of the castle from the east side:


But it really went to a new level when I decided to take a ride on the TTA...I saw while I was in line that the sunset sky was really beginning to get orange, so I was ready to fire some shots from the ride - always a challenge of movement and timing. ; I got the first glimpse of the impressive sunset sky as I rolled over Stitch's Great Escape and rounded the turn towards the castle:


I managed to snap one more between the pillars just before we went into the first tunnel:


The skies change incredibly fast at that time of evening - by the time we rolled out of Space Mountain and started over Tomorrowland Speedway where I could get a glimpse of the castle against the sky, it had changed to this:


Once I got off TTA, I immediately worked my way back to the Tomorrowland/Fantasyland bridge path to the east side of the castle for a handheld snap of the lighted castle and the last of the dusk light:


And into the new Fantasyland area for that shot of the new castle walls in the fading light:


It was quite an intense 30-35 minutes or so of sunset and dusk skies, after a very cool day of textured blue and white!

 

Holy smokes Justin! Those are beautiful! But those sunsets are absolutely beautiful !


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Thanks guys. ; Nature did all the work - I just shot it - those skies were extremely cool! ; The weather was fantastic the whole trip and the skies were mostly blue, crystal clear and lovely - but that one day had the really cool textured clouds that just added something extra to it.

 

If this had happened during Pixelmania, everyone would have been eating at Liberty Tree! ; No late afternoon ADRs, people!

Beautiful work, Justin.

 

Thanks guys. ; Sadly, we're always going to be wondering what we're missing when we are stopping to eat at Pixelmania...the only other option is to go without eating, or grab cart food along the way so we're always mobile and ready!

 

Thanks Scott - no those clouds are fairly rare in central Florida - usually only when cold fronts come in and push against the warmer air...that was the day the cold front arrived in Orlando - daytime was mid-70s, but by night it crashed down to 36!


I've got one other set of shots with those same clouds - back in 2006. ; Gives an idea how rare those types of skies are! ; Unfortunately all of those incredibly rich sunset cloud shots happened in a 5 minute period or so - and I was on the TTA ride at the time...so HDRs were out of the question. ; I raced over to Fantasyland as soon as I was off the TTA, to get the castle shots from near Cosmic Ray's, and you can see the sunset colors had already ended. ; You had to get a shot of those skies during that 5 minute window!

 

I might be able to try pulling the shadows up even more on that second sunset shot - but note I already pulled them up about 3 stops just to get the outlines of the building lights more. ; As you may know, shooting on the TTA involves ducking under the upper rail, over the lower rail, and timing the shot in the 1.5 seconds between each vertical column that you pass - not much time to plan the exposure especially when you come around that corner and notice the sky for the first time! ; I had about 6 seconds before entering the first tunnel to see it, realize it, pull the camera up, and snap a few shots between rails. ; It's one of the few times I ever regretted being on the TTA, because I could have been down on the ground firing off some HDRs!

 

I'll play around with it and see if there's anything more I can get from it that way. ; I did layers when I brought the shadows up before, but did a straight stack, no HDR blending. ; I'm still happy I managed to get the skies in, just for that memory of how it looked for that small moment in time.

 

I noticed the same - I'm looking forward to the cooler weather for the weekend - this past Saturday and Sunday, I was out birding and the temperature *and I'm not exaggerating!* was 90 degrees. ; In February. ; With the humidity to match. ; That's just a little on the stupid side - I know we haven't had winter in 3 years, but 90 in February just makes me want to move to Nunavut, Canada.


Hopefully the skies will be as interesting for you - I think Thu to Friday are your best chances as that's when the front is moving through.