Practicing for the Nighttime World Tour

It sounds as if one of our walk ideas at Pixelmania will be nighttime World Showcase touring...a long-time favorite of mine. ; I usually pick at least one night each trip to whip out the tripod and do some night shooting. ; This past trip was no different...After arriving Wed night, the following night we had spent the day at AK and that night decided to pop into Epcot for dinner (since we were at Boardwalk...one of the great perks of staying there!). ; I brought along my camera and tripod, figuring we'd be walking through fairly late in the evening on an EMH night, and it wouldn't be too crowded.

After dinner at the San Angel Inn in Mexico, I took a little World Showcase walk to snap a few of the countries.

Here's Mexico's pavilion...I went for a darker composition here to keep it mysterious:



Here's a wide shot of the World Showcase lagoon from the Mexico bridge:



Went for a long exposure of the US, since I was using some telephoto from across the lake...in hindsight maybe stop down a bit more next time to avoid blowing out the clock tower:



Here's China, from around Canada:



In the UK, the moon started poking itself out of the heavy clouds, and the cool moonlight against the warm glow of incandescent and sodium lights on the brick Pub building was just too cool! ; I got up close and used wide angle tilted up to catch the moon and sky and force the building's perspective a bit...it's a favorite shot from that night:



Turning the other way to look down the 'street', I got a fairly clean shot of the UK Pavilion, with only a few people walking through the shot, fast enough with a 13 second exposure that they basically don't show up in the shot:



Coming over the bridge to France...I liked the way the pavilion was framed by the trees, and the Hollywood Studios lights were in the background...so I took one shot wide using the trees as a frame:



Then I loved farther across the bridge for one without the trees:



Just for the heck of it, and because the park was so empty at 11:15pm...I snapped one of the quiet bridge:



The 20-second exposure would have mostly ghosted anyone out of the shot, but I didn't need to, because noone walked into the frame!

Anyway...that was a little practice night tour of some of the World Showcase! ; I can't wait for Pixelmania, when it will be much more pleasant to make that tour, with cooler temps and a lot less mosquitos. ;

 

Jeff - I think just one stat is visible in those...off to the left of frame. ; The rest of the bright spots in the first France photo look like glints off the leaves of the trees. ; It was too cloudy for many stars that night anyway, and even if it wasn't, we don't see too many stars down here in Florida! ; and thanks too!

Thanks John...appreciate the comments!