Echo Lake Sunset in Disney’s Hollywood Studios

Photographic Innoventions by Scott Thomas

As I was scouting locations for the Star Wars Weekend Fireworks, I checked out the view from across Echo Lake. It was late in the day and the Sun was just going down behind the palm trees to the right of Min & Bill’s Dockside Diner. This created a large light discrepancy between the bright sky and the water. As I talked about with Cinderella Castle a couple of weeks ago, I decided to take a series of photos to capture the large range of light in the scene to combine later to create a High Dynamic Range (HDR) image.

The light range was even larger this time and I took a set of seven photos from -3EV to +3EV in 1 EV stop increments. I later merged those photos together using Photomatix Pro software.

Echo Lake in HDR at Disney's Hollywood Studios, Walt Disney World, Orlando, Florida.
Echo Lake in HDR at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
Nikon D700/24-120VR, f/16, ISO 200, EV 0, 24mm focal length, HDR Image.

This view has changed over the years and will be again as the American Idol Experience has now shut down. As Rafiki says, Change is good.

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Scott's "Photographic Innoventions" blog focuses on intermediate to advanced photography concepts and techniques relevant for Point and Shoot and Digital SLR cameras.

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One Reply to “Echo Lake Sunset in Disney’s Hollywood Studios”

  1. Nice picture.Do you need to use a tripod when you take multiple exposures to combine in the computer or Will the software adjust for any variation.

    Scott replies: I hand hold a lot of my HDR photo sets. The software mentioned, Photomatix, does adjust and does a very good job. For this photo, I did not use a tripod.