Have you ever gotten back from Disneyland and looked through your photos and just found snapshot after snapshot? Nothing stands out and they all look like all the other pictures you and millions of other people have taken? What you need is a photography refresh. Here are a couple ideas to get you back in the game:

• Rent a new lens from somewhere like http://www.lensrentals.com/. Make sure to get something interesting though, like a super wide angle lens, a macro lens or a LensBaby and then try looking at the park in a whole new way.
• Shoot the entire day with one of your lenses you don’t use a bunch. One day this trip I shot only with my brothers 70-250 mm lens and it very interesting how different you see things.
• Shoot something different in the park. Try taking only pictures of flowers or of signs. Try focusing on the inside of shops. Shoot all of the food you eat. Just try and get out of your comfort zone.
• Shoot at night. Take a tripod into the park and do long exposures of the lights and people. Let this be a starting point for inspiration.
• Try shooting HDR shots. Your going to need a tripod again probably (although if it’s light enough out you can try using your continuous shot mode.) 
• Shoot panoramas. The image at the top is six shots stitched together. There are tons of locations in the park that make for great panoramas: the castle up close, from Tarzan’s Tree House, or Tom Sawyers Island. Walk the park with this in mind and a lot of places will jump out at you. 
• Go all out. Don’t just “take pictures at Disneyland”. Take great pictures at Disneyland. Dedicate an hour or two (or a day) to just taking pictures at the park. Look for the artistic shot, the dramatic shot. These are the pictures that people that aren’t into Disney parks are going to look at and be impressed with because they go past vacation pictures into the realm of really great photography. Check out Express Monorail on flickr for inspiration.

Any other suggestions for getting our of the snapshot zone when shooting at Disney parks? Let me know in the comments.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 17th, 2009 at 1:04 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.