This article is a series of tips for taking good pictures at Walt Disney World Resort. Or Disneyland.  Or Disneyland Paris.  Or Disneyland Tokyo.  Or Disneyland Hong Kong.  You get the idea.

Naturally, a good camera will go a long way towards getting you those priceless shots, but it’s not always the camera that matters. The best picture I ever took was with a cheap disposable camera.

1. Turn off the flash.

Obviously this is only during daylight hours and when otherwise well lit, but if your camera is on auto, you’ll lose valuable time while your camera tries to decide if it needs to flash or not. By turning off the flash, you cut focus and decision time down greatly giving your a better chance at that great photo.

2. Use the “Sports” setting.

Most digital cameras come with a setting for capturing moving targets… I mean, subjects. Parades aren’t the only things you’ll want to take pictures of that move. Don’t forget things like Kilimanjaro Safari’s (the truck doesn’t stay still, and neither do the animals!), or taking pictures while you’re actually on rides. In addition, your subject doesn’t need to be the thing moving. How many times have you be running to a ride, only to spot Tigger waving at you? With the sports setting, you may not even have to slow down.

Hint: You want this    not this   

3. Zoom before hand.

Obviously this won’t work for everything, but if you’re planning to take pictures at a parade, or get a close up of your traveling party while you’re on a ride, plan ahead and set up the zoom before you’re trying to take the picture. For instance, if you want a shot of the floats as they approach you, you’ll want to zoom in. If you want the parade floats as they’re directly in front of you, you’ll want to zoom out.

4. Keep batteries handy.

True, you can purchase batteries almost anywhere in the parks, but I can guarantee you that if there’s a bad time to run out of batteries (such as on Kilimanjaro Safari- this happened to my brother in law), that’s when it’ll happen. And you don’t just want to have them somewhere on your person, you want to keep them handy. In your camera bag is good, or in a zippered pocket in your trousers.

5. Make sure that you have plenty of memory.

Either use a huge memory card, or bring a back up. As with the batteries, you can buy more memory (or load pictures to a CD), but it may not be convenient and will certainly be expensive.

6. Take pictures in the afternoon.

And try to keep the sun behind you, to light up your subject.  For some reason, most of my morning shots turned out well lit, but washed out.  I don’t know if there’s a scientific reason for this, or if it’s just that I was never on the correct side of my subject in the morning, but most of my afternoon shots were beautiful.  I also had a lot of glaring in the mornings.

Above all, you want to be ready. Keep your camera handy at all times as characters love to simply show up in guest photos and you never know what (or who) may appear. But remember to sometimes look away from the lens for a minute. Your memories don’t happen through the camera, they’re just preserved that way.

If you enjoyed this article on taking pictures at Walt Disney World, please visit the rest of this site for more advice when visiting Walt Disney World vacation resort.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 7th, 2008 at 3:45 am and is filed under Tips. 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.