Easter Pictures

So, the gallery of what I initially called 5-star images is up here; I think I've changed my mind about a few of them, but that could be just the 1024x768 images that are shown in the gallery.  If anyone wants 'em, I set the gallery to allow downloading of whole images -- just be aware that the new camera is 15 megapixels, so the images are...big.

Meanwhile, here are the smaller preview-sized pictures.  Comments, if any, are above the corresponding picture.

First we have NEON. ;-)  Actually, I liked all the almost garish colors contrasting with the gentle blue of the sky.  Also?  Love the clouds.

I've taken almost this exact picture before, but this is cropped extensively.  Plus, the sky was blue -- difficult for someone who generally chooses to do Disney on cooler days or late afternoon / night time.

Patrick does not often let me take his picture, so I generally snap one while he's taking his own.  Sometimes I even get away with it.

"Get ready, Screamers!  Launch in five, four, three...."

"...two..."

"...one!"  (Note that this picture looked sharp when I edited it.  It seems odd to think that some blurriness was added -- specifically to the people and background -- when it was resized for the web, but who knows?)

 Grizzly Peak.  It took me three or four visits to catch onto the face, way back when.

I like the vertical composition better, but I prefer the colors in this one:

And this one:

I've mentioned before, I think, that I love to photograph water.

The Disneyland...Honor...Band (I think that was what it was called) during the Flag Retreat Ceremony.  (Which I stumbled upon as I was attempting to attach a different camera strap, as I didn't really want to walk around with, in effect, "NEW DIGITAL CAMERA" emblazoned on my neck, even at Disneyland.)

The old logo, the band uniforms...somehow it screamed sepia tone.  I also have a B&W version.

Sunset!

And, last but in no way least, my pride and joy of the day, taken at an ISO of 3200, with my nifty fifty, in order to get the most light into the camera as possible.

Again, whole gallery is here.  Other galleries (past pictures) are here.

Adventures

Back at Christmas, I was the happy recipient of a "nifty 50" -- a Canon 50 mm prime lens that costs around $100.  It's mostly plastic and -- as with all of photography -- not the best 50 mm prime lens you can buy.

However, it's a 50 mm f 1.8 lens, so I happily brought it along to ride the new it's a small world and to take some pictures.

I got a couple of good shots, but my favorite of the night is this one, from the also newly-refurbished Sleeping Beauty Castle walk-through.

This one was taken with my trusty kit lens from way back when I bought the camera, but I'd paused there to wait for my mom to buy a coffee, and I never take photos from this angle or vantage point.

A couple of small world shots.  I like Woody the best, but to be fair, I tried to get away with an ISO of 400 in an effort to reduce noise.  I got a surprising number of usable shots, but I think next time I'll go for 800 and see what I can do with that.  There's always 1600 if I must.

Meanwhile, still slowly going through San Diego pictures from...ahem...the day after Thanksgiving.  Lots of neat Balboa Park architectural pictures, with some Seaport Village thrown in.

Seaport Village:

Balboa Park:

And that's all she wrote, for now.

The Bombest Shirt

Sometimes Patrick does things with language that really should be corrected, but instead creep into the family's unique vernacular.

"Whoosh" for Gadget's Co Coaster, for instance, or the various alternate titles he used for his favorite episodes of Star Trek and Xena when he was little -- to the point that I had to make a chart for our dad for when Patrick visited him at work.

On our last night at the Magic Kingdom, we were waiting for our return time to Space Mountain -- which was basically, I think, a gift Fast Pass given to us by the cast member when I approached and asked which queue (standby or Fast Pass) was used for wheelchair access.

Patrick still needed to get his shirt from the Magic Kingdom, so after we rode the PeopleMover (for about the 5th time) and watched the Carousel of Progress again (boo for the "no photography at all" rule -- I get no flash pictures...but none at all...really?), we headed over to a gift shop in Tomorrowland to look for a shirt.

We ended up at the Merchant of Venus (har har har; get it?) and were perusing shirts.  Unbeknownst to Patrick, one of my goals for this trip was to curb his "I must buy a shirt at each park, so I will buy the first shirt I see at each park" strategy.  So far, it had worked well.  He saw a couple of shirts on one side, but we perused the rest of them.

And then, he saw it.

"That's the bomb!" he said, taking the shirt down admiringly.  Remember, Patrick likes his shirts loud; this one was deafening.  He stared at it, and said, "That's not the bomb, that's the bombest!"

So, with grateful thanks to the Maid Service supervisor who reminded the hotel employees that they are supposed to check under beds for forgotten items, here is Patrick in his newly-arrived bombest shirt:

We bought the shirt and still had five minutes to kill, so we...wait for it...rode the PeopleMover again.  "That's the bombest shirt!" Patrick kept saying, admiringly, pausing only to watch the model of Walt's original EPCOT.

The Best-Laid Plans

Of the 70ish pictures I took on my last venture to Disneyland, this time for Christmas pics, I think this little guy is my favorite shot of the night:

I've been trying to get his buddy the owl for a couple of years, but if I don't use a flash, my camera exposes for the castle and you can't see him.  If I do, the flash reflects off the carving, making him overexposed and yucky.

This one was a lucky shot (something like a 14ish second exposure that I manually focused because I couldn't convince my camera that I was trying to take a picture of something so far away) while I waited for Patrick to use the restroom.

Disneyland Halloween Time Photos

Once I made the momentous discovery (Tripods rock!  And my dad had two!  And you can attach them to a wheelchair with a bungee cord for easy carrying!) a few months ago, I've been enamored of night time photography

A couple of years ago, I went to Disneyland and took lots of photos of Disneyland's Halloween decorations.  I regretfully noticed that they looked gorgeous at night time but knew I'd never be able to hand-hold my camera well enough to get good shots.

Enter the tripod and my other new best friend: my remote shutter release.  ('Cause, really, do you want to put it on countdown mode and wait 10 seconds for every shot?  I thought not.)

It took some time to cull the best of the best out.  For one thing, though I'm having lots of fun, I'm still not certain of my ability to expose correctly, so I took about three exposures of each shot.  For another, I did mess up on the exposure quite a bit (all the lighting on Main Street threw off the metering, I think) so I had to spend some quality time with Aperture.

The full-quality gallery is here, but to my knowledge, you must have a current version of Internet Explorer or a relatively current version of Firefox.  If you don't, here are the low-quality versions.

Also included are some wanderings around California Adventure, and some night time shots of Paradise Pier, because going on Midway Mania before going to Disneyland is Patrick's new Routine.

(And, yes, a Routine carries enough importance to Patrick that it must be capitalized.)

For the Candy Corn Acres pictures, I was on a mission not to take normal "snapshot" touristy shots.  I was actively seeking out unusual compositions.  I hope I succeeded.

The one pumpkin head I missed last time around, in daylight:

My camera did not like the reds here, but I included it because I haven't seen many photos of these decorations out and about on the Internet.

The beginning of trip number two: the soon-to-be-gone Sun Wheel.  While the new entry plaza looks cool, I'll miss it.

Still working on how to expose sunset shots, but good for me:

The gondolas are missing! :-o  Actually, I just liked the pattern of all the steel supports.

When hinges creak in doorless chambers....

Oh, look.  It's light pollution.  I saw a magazine in the store the other day (Time? Newsweek?  Something reputable, at any rate.) that had an article titled something like "The Loss of Night."

Is it sad that I stood in line to take a picture of Mickey and not to take a picture of family or friends in front of Mickey, like everyone else did?

Hmm...what to do while Patrick rides the train?  Oh, yes.  Take pictures of the station.

This might, just might, be my favorite of the bunch.

Interestingly enough, its daytime-equivalent from a couple of years ago was my favorite of that bunch.

Yeah, so I actually stood in line twice to take pictures of nobody.

 
Christmas pics will be coming...well, if the Halloween ones are any example...probably sometime in January.