EPCOT Nights

It had been a minute since I put up a picture of Spaceship Earth, but it is always inevitable that this glowing orb will find its way into my viewfinder. Nowadays, with all the fancy lights installed, every time you look, the scene is different — different color, pattern, brightness, all of the above. I liked this shot because of how the multi-colored lights from SSE reflect in the prism of the fountain, but also off the white of the flags and cast yellows and oranges across the leaves of the tree. You throw in the complimentary yellow of the lights surrounding the courtyard and its is truly a sea of color — all while the black of the night sky sets everything off.

Speaking of black, I knew I wanted it as deep as possible to really make the colors pop, so I edited it that way, pulling the whites and highlights way down. I tweaked the clarity a bit to try and make the a crisp contrast between what was lit and what was not and pumped up the vibrancy and saturation. As for framing the subject, it is always hard to distract from SSE when it is in the shot, but I wanted the color to be the subject here, in all its forms. I think the framing captures that well. I blurred out the crowd on the bottom right. In blurred form, it just became another place for the color to take up space rather than get cluttered by form. I actually didn’t notice the reflection of the lights in the lens until I went in to edit, but felt it somehow balanced the shot and helps keep SSE from taking over. I’m sure that is a novice move on my part, but (as you may have noticed if you’ve read other posts) sometimes it is the imperfections of a shot that become my favorite part. I’d definitely say that was the case here as well.