My First Shot: Disney Theme Parks
A large chunk of my photography beat revolves around theme parks, for reasons that still aren’t perfectly clear to me. I’ve been taking photos of theme parks for nearly a decade at this point, which makes me positively jurassic in internet years. Old enough that somebody is probably about to extract my DNA from a mosquito and make a theme park about me. “Marvel at this magnificent beast who used the internet BEFORE FACEBOOK!!!” [the crowd gasps, children snap photos, the flash photography angers me enough that I escape my cage and wreak havoc on Jeff Goldblum] (Editor’s note - Hollywood, you have my number...)
We all have to start somewhere, so I thought it would be fun to look through my photos and share the literal first photos I ever took inside these theme parks. It’s the origin story you never wanted to hear! Spoiler alert: these shots are horrible.
Diving into this I realized it’s a bit harder to figure this stuff out than I thought it would be. There’s many caveats to this exercise: I’m assuming I didn’t delete any photos long ago that I have now forgotten about. It’s always possible I took some cell phone photo before taking a “real” photo, but as far as I can currently tell these are my first shots. Cell phone photos don’t count anyway because everybody knows cell phone photos are not real photos and everybody laughs at them like when a kid cooks you dinner with his Play-Doh (Editor’s note - kidding, iPhoneographers!)
My first shot at Disneyland is actually pretty hard to figure out. Growing up near Disneyland I spent a lot of time there as a child and can imagine I had a cheap, disposable camera in hand eat some point and took a photo, but I have no real way of knowing or confirming this. I got my first camera (of any sort) ever in 2006: a Canon 30D (Editor’s note - yes, a Canon). My original photographic interests had more to do with portraits and less to do with narrative placemaking errr idealized fictions errr places with hot dogs and roller coasters, so all my early DSLR shots are of people and not really places. This held true even if I took my camera to Disneyland (Editor’s note - fellow photogs, imagine going to Disneyland with your gear and never taking a photo of anything there. Gives me the shakes just thinking about it). Looking through my early Disneyland shots I eventually see myself take in interest in the landscape of Disneyland itself, beginning roughly with this shot taken in Critter Country sometime in December 2008.
It’s not a horrible shot, getting across some of the atmosphere of the area fairly well, but not exactly the type of game changer that would launch a thousand instagram accounts and infinite Getty Images money. The sequence leading to this shot actually started with photos of who I was eating lunch with, which slowly transitioned to the ducks at Hungry Bear stealing our fries (Editor’s note - curse you, ducks!), and then transitioning to this landscape shot. It’s like I can see the landscape beast awaken in each frame. The beast grew rapidly quickly: within the month I would get some sense, sell my 30D, and purchase a Nikon D700 and 14-24 f/2.8 to dive head first into landscapes with Disneyland as my training ground.
As 2009 rolled both my theme park and photography interests continued to develop in tandem, somewhat fueling each other. With this newfound appreciation, I took myself to Walt Disney World to celebrate successfully defending my dissertation, and to have some well-earned fun, in August 2009. At this point I was taking purposeful landscape photos and had that as at least a partial goal of my trip. I had been to WDW before, but not in 14 years at this point. The Flickr theme park photo community was still fairly nascent and tight-knit back then (Editor’s Note - Flickr was this weird thing people used before we all decided the best way to look at photos was on tiny squares on tiny phone screens)
First up on this trip was the Magic Kingdom, where I took this gem when we got through the gates on August 9, 2009. It’s a masterpiece of something, but certainly not quality. It’s clearly a “whoa, we’re here and look at that big castle” shot. I don’t think I actually even stopped walking to take it. I remember I just wanted something to remind myself of how it felt walking down Main Street in the Magic Kingdom for the first time (as an adult, at least). To that end it succeeds quite well. It’s also the only theme park where I first visit/photographed it at night. Thankfully I’ve since learned that actually stopping rather than walking while taking my photos improves their quality (Editor’s note - that’s a free pro-tip, kids!)
The first “arty” shot I took was probably this one when we finally got up to Cinderella Castle. Taken just 5 minutes later, I think we must have actually been in a rush to make reservations at Cinderella’s Royal Table, or at least that’s what I’m telling myself to excuse the poor quality. I mean, I guess it’s a photo of the detail on the turrets? Never a good sign when you’re not even sure what the subject of your photo is.
The next day was my first ever visit to Animal Kingdom where I took my first shot of this lamp. I mean, it’s a nice detail and the shot is in focus in everything, but yeah it’s just a lamp. I imagine I was just waiting in line, bored, so I snapped this. My priorities were more soaking in the park vs. getting great photos so I was more working photography around what I was doing. I still follow this philosophy to this day, but I think I’m better at melding the two. Sadly, my lamp photography career never really took off. The lamp game was getting too commercial, anyway. It used to be about the lamps, you know?
The next day took us to Epcot where I took a photo of the Fountain of Nations... except the fountains aren’t even going. A+ stuff here. I mean, if you imagine the fountains actually going it’s probably not a bad shot! But as it is, it is remarkably devoid of an actual subject. Amazing.
Finally we get to Hollywood Studios where I once again get myself in a line and once again snap a photo while waiting. This one actually isn’t so bad, although the Tower is probably too hidden and it just looks like an awkward photo of plants with a dash of something legitimately interesting. I can probably sum up much of my life as “awkward but a dash of something legitimately interesting” (Editor’s Note: that phrase is now ™ and © 2016 me. All rights reserved).
In March 2011 I would get to Tokyo for the first time, and get my first taste of Tokyo DisneySea. My first shot was this kind of random shot of Mysterious Island. My excuse here was that my jaw was probably still dropping as I ran around trying to hold back my photo urges while the rest of my group tried to go on actual rides like normal people. It was a great first first trip to DisneySea as a guest, but as a photographer it was filled with so much unresolved tension. I assume the gossip of the park that day was “will they or won’t they?” as DisneySea and my camera flirted with each other incessantly (Editor’s note - by the first episode of the next season they totally did it).
An earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster would prevent me from going to Tokyo Disneyland on that March trip, but I returned later in November of that year to finish what I started.. and this time, it was personal! (Editor’s note - it was not, in fact, personal). This is, yet again, a shot from a line as I rushed to Monsters Inc. Ride Go Seek at opening. Not a horrible shot of Tokyo’s Tomorrowland, but still a “the best shot I can get from this spot in the line” type of thing vs. a “the best shot I could get if I actually tried”. I still remember the utter lack of breath I had from my first Tokyo Disneyland mad dash that morning: funny how that stuff imprints on you.
In July 2014 I would finally get to Paris and visit Disneyland Paris. By then I knew I was going to take a cheesy “I just got on Main Street and this is what I saw” type of shot, with no pretense of actually trying any photographic ninjutsu. I recalled how that first MK shot I discussed earlier really took me back to that first moment, and I wanted something similar for Paris. As such, despite being horrible as an actual photos, I still get nice feelings whenever I look at this one. I’m especially proud of how I must have shoved the family in the foreground’s dad to the side so I could blur out his family and take a photo of the castle before declaring “Bonjour, sucker!” and throwing an American Flag and cheeseburger in his general direction as I scurried off (Editor’s note - this didn’t actually happen).
Finishing strong at Disney’s crowning achievement: Walt Disney Studios Paris (Editor’s Note - I had to bribe my hands with a massage to convince them to actually type that). I actually had no intention of even visiting this park on this day but the Ratatouille ride just happened to open the day I visited so we went over. Ironically, it may be one of my better first shots despite being at the ugliest theme park. The French love irony, right? Oui!
So that’s that. Great effort, nice hustle: take a knee everybody (Editor’s Note - imagine I look like Monty Burns when he coaches a baseball team). What have we learned? Not much, really, but just look how bad these shots are! It’s remarkable. Perhaps the lesson here is if I can be this bad, then you can too! Wait.., that’s a terrible moral. Okay, just imagine the moral is that hard work means nothing because it’s all about getting lucky with good light and then using the right hashtags. Wait, that moral sucks too. Hmm. Forget the moral. There is no moral. Ever. We had fun though (Editor’s note - debatable).
I’m curious if everybody’s look this bad, or if it’s just me. It’s probably just me. I truly hope these are the worst photos to ever grace this website. The only solace I take is knowing I still have one and soon two parks to visit in China, so I mercifully still have some chances to take an actually decent first shot. Cross your fingers: after a decade maybe I’ll finally get it right.
(Editor’s note - we all know they’re still going to suck, but don’t harsh the vibe... we need to end on a positive note. Excelsior!)