Friday, October 7, 2016

The Liberty Belle

Take A Journey Back In Time - Disney at Night

Hop on board the three-tired Colonial America inspired, steam powered, paddle wheeler riverboat and take a trip back in time to what life in America used to be over 100 years ago.  The Liberty Belle takes a trip around Tom Sawyer Island along the Rivers of America,  During the ride, you'll hear a narration from Mark Twain about life in America during that time period.


This is my new favorite spot to get a picture of the Liberty Belle riverboat when she is docked in Liberty Square in the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World.  To get this shot, enter the stand-by line for the Haunted Mansion.  Just a few feet past the entrance you can get this perspective.

This is another 3 bracket capture that I later merged and tone mapped into an HDR image using Adobe Lightroom.  Given it was a night shot, I had to use my mini tripod to hold the camera steady.  This is where mini tripods really come in handy.  For those of you that have been in the Haunted Mansion stand-by line, you know there is ironwork above a wall that prevents guests from falling into Rivers of America.  A full sized tripod would be really inconsiderate here (if even allowed these days), so with a mini tripod sitting on the top of the wall, guests didn't even notice me standing there.  The normal exposure was set to aperture f/8.0, ISO100. with a shutter speed of 8 sec at 37mm (1.5x crop).  You'll notice the reflection is a little soft.  That's because of the long exposures which tend to "smooth out" the reflection in the first place,  and then merging three images together into an HDR image.

Have fun capturing the magic of Disney!