Adventure In The Great Wide Somewhere

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 thousands of my own pictures every vacation and hope to share a bit of my experience with you.  The motion blur never bothered me any way. Tag! You're it! Actually it did drive me crazy when I got blurry shots.  I used to think that shots that included large amounts of blur indicated an immediate need to erase the picture then retake it without even looking at what I had captured. Then I realized that sometimes they provide an otherwise un-capture-able real moment with my kids.   While some are blurry because I'm lit...

A cruise is plenty incredible in it's own right with a ton of different activities for the whole family to participate in, however for us photography enthusiasts with a bit of a competitive streak, there really isn't anything to compare to a good old fashioned photo scavenger hunt. The rules are simple, each team must stick together and at least one team member must be in the photo with each item. Try to earn as many points as you can in a set amount of time (an hour or two or a whole afternoon if you wish) you lose a point per minute after the cutoff! Spend some time during dinner voting on the bonus points then take a tally and see who wins!   5 Empty deck chairs in a row A cast member with the same name as one of your team member A Chandelier A Giant Letter (Vote for Largest – Two Points) A Miniature Bottle of Shampoo A Permanent Sculpture (Vote for 5 Points – Be Creative!!!) A Piece of Fruit (More Exotic = More Points/Vote for 2 Points) A princess A Ship...

Welcome Wordless Wednesday Blog Hoppers! Road Trip, anyone?  Thank you to Focused on the Magic for hosting!   

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 thousands of my own pictures every vacation and hope to share a bit of my experience with you. Sometimes the most simple way to create an interesting picture is to look around and pay attention to reflective surfaces. Sometimes surprising, sometimes funny, sometimes gorgeous, reflections go with whatever way you want to use them. Puddles, glass, security bubble mirrors, silverware, wood with a fine sheen to it, if you keep your eyes open, the possibilities are nearly endless. Doors Floors Bars Interior glass Walls Pretty muc...

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 thousands of my own pictures every vacation and hope to share a bit of my experience with you. With how easy it is to pick up an iPhone and take a photo, it's only fair to let the mouseketeers enjoy a crack at it once in a while. My DDs perspective particularly delights me. She's clearly been watching me take photos of the details on vacation because the first three she took when she got a hold of my iPhone at breakfast last vacation involved: Detail of her chair back.  The Patterned Carpet And last but not least... A Clo...

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 thousands of my own pictures every vacation and hope to share a bit of my experience with you. If you've been paying attention in my trip reports, you'll notice that sometimes my vacation pictures may go a little odd and occasionally leave you seeing double. Why? Well, sometime on my first cruise Ben took a picture of me.  Just watching the ocean I rather loved the view of the ocean and it was a neat way to remember my first cruise. Trying to replicate the photo on our second cruise with me at the edge of a panorama shot at the front...

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. Sometimes it's time to just put the camera down! (Or at least refocus.) I love my memories, but there are recent studies out in Psychological Science that suggest that taking photos of whole objects may make it, in fact, harder to remember than merely observing an object. So should we give up on photography entirely and just pay attention to our surroundings? Maybe not. The study goes on to point out when the subjects took the time to focus their ...

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. Much like the classic Disney shorts of the forties, sometimes black and white is a good thing. Basically, in these pictures the idea is to use the contrast to bring out details that are lost in the original color photo. The Classic Ships look very old fashioned in black and white. I think I'll print this for over my desk. After uploading to Flicker, I use Aviary to edit the photos into a black and white view. I love how her dress reflection really pops out...

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. One of the difficult things about capturing vacation magic is the overall grandeur and scale. Walking down main street toward the hub, Cinderella Castle is larger than life, as is Rapunzel's Tower, Spaceship Earth, the Tree of Life, Mickey's Sorceror's Hat and the Disney Ships themselves. The problem with many of the photos of these landmarks is they fail to offer any sense of the scale afforded by the people and surroundings.. Rapunzel's tower is huge! O...

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. Sometimes my children love to play along and primp and pose. My Little Princess. Sometimes they don't.  Her #DisneySide. She's a feisty little princess! Now you can just take a bunch of funky, bug-eyed attitude photos. I personally find them hilarious and as much an accurate portrait of my kiddos as the perfectly fairytale photos. But eventually, the kiddos just don't want to pose. The infamous "I'm Bored" face. I've found that...

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 the pixie dust settles it is sometimes hard to remember that sometimes magical moments take place everyday. Not just birthdays or parties but every single day. Those little moments. The rests and preparations that help us enjoy the Tuesdays and Thursdays and bland stretches of time while we're patiently waiting between red letter days. Hence everyday photography. I use all sorts of events and non-events to practice photography so that red letter days can be a li...

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 we all know a rainy day at Disney is better than a sunny day at home, but sometimes we forget to take pictures of anything that isn't practically perfect on vacation. The sad part is that all these little imperfect moments make up the most magical memories!  Rainy days. Falling asleep on the Magical Express. Cloudy days. Tired out after running in and out of the lagoon at Castaway Cay's Family Beach. Waiting for the start of the Pirates in ...

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. Bright eyed, or not such a bright idea? As much fun as the blinded in the light squinty eyed look is, sometimes it better to hit the shade. Remember back when we talked about the golden hour ? Unfortunately, as far as photography goes, magical moments occur all day long rather than evenly within an hour of sunrise or sunset.   For more beautiful outdoors photos, where you can actually see those beautiful baby blues instead of a lot of squint...