Five Minute Fairytale Photos ~ Great Big Beautiful

I think that the magic of a Disney vacation exists in three wonderful parts: the dreaming of planning, the pixie dust moments during trip itself and the memories you take with you for years to come.
Since I can't live in the Cinderella Castle Suite or even on property year round, pictures help bring a bit of the fairytale back into my everyday life.

In my enthusiastic pursuit of remembering the Magic, I take hundreds of my own pictures every vacation and hope to share a bit of my experience with you.

As I've mentioned before I absolutely love looking back at the beauty of the ship and islands and reliving every little bit of my cruise. Sadly, sometimes my iPhone pictures just don't do the surroundings any kind of justice. They just can't capture the magnitude of the vistas.

Castaway Cay looks so little. But at least the water looks beautiful

Around the third day of my second cruise, my dear husband showed me something interesting. The iPhone has a panorama feature.
Well now he tells me.
Cool, let's see what I can do with that.! 

Now that's the Castaway Cay I know and love!

Now I can take pictures that capture the whole great big beautiful ship I love in one go! It's under the options settings. Pan slowly trying to keep the arrow on the line as you go. If you don't pan smoothly you end up with jumps like so:

Fun...But not as pretty as it really is.

I brace the wrist of the hand shooting the photo on other hand and try to leave my feet planted as I pan.



Much Smoother

Suddenly your landscapes open up and capture the landscape! Or the interior of the ship.



Animator's Palate

Deck 5 view of atrium

Coming into port

Once you're comfortable with panorama, there are tons of fun applications. Like getting in a photo twice by running around behind the photographer after he pans past you. Or getting everyone in your group by handing off the photo after you pan past the person on one end, the photographer jumps in on the other.

Second cruise...two of me!

It's no fun if you don't keep pushing your boundaries and moving forward. And panoramas definitely add a little pixie dust to your pictures. 

“I'm doing this because I want to do it better.”

~Walt Disney

So get out there, make mistakes, play with panoramas, try to do it better, try a shot that shouldn't work, but might and see what fairytale photos follow you home.