Crystal Arts, Magic Kingdom, Walt Disney World

Vacation time! I suppose it should be no surprise that I’m in Walt Disney World. I arrived in Florida late Saturday afternoon and spent my first evening down at Disney Springs (the area formally known as Downtown Disney). My first day (Sunday) had to be the Magic Kingdom. I try to start with the classics… 🙂

I arrived at the park early and explored as much as possible with my camera. After the park officially opened and guests could leave the hub, I rode quite a few rides before deciding it was time for lunch. On my way down Main Street I stopped in Crystal Arts. This is the glassworks store of the Arribas Brothers in the Magic Kingdom. My interest wasn’t in the intricate glass sculptures, it was the glassblower at the back of the store.

Most days there are demonstrations. My luck was running high yesterday as the next demo was in 15 minutes. Lunch could wait. I hoped it would be the craftsman I have watched before (I stop every visit). My goal was to capture a few images of the process.

Score! It was Charlie! Not only is he talented, he interacts well with the crowd. At first I was the only one watching. I don’t think many people know about this opportunity, but as the demo goes on Charlie attracts quite a few onlookers. You need to invest the time. The whole demo was about 40 minutes with another 10 minutes of conversation at the end.

I was fortunate to get a few good images…

Animal Kingdom, Walt Disney World

I really like the contrast of the red umbrella against the greenery of Animal Kingdom. I have a tendency to capture images of the umbrellas when I’m in the park. After processing the image the other day I chose to look through my archive for additional scenes. Once I saw the this one, which included a reflection, how could I not share… 🙂

Epcot, Walt Disney World

A Disney image is all I’m able to process at the moment. I wish it was because I was in my happy place, but sadly, my computer crashed Thursday evening. I’ve spent the last few days trying to recover the system, but eventually had to give up. Luckily for me, I have a laptop for travel, but the only images still on it are from my Disney trip last September.

Don’t worry, I have everything backed up so I will not lose any data, but rebuilding the system or, in the most drastic case, buying a new one is on hold until I can get my Lightroom catalog off the secondary hard drive. I ordered an external HDD enclosure so I could copy everything to an external HDD. Anyway, enough nerd talk.

I’m a fan of the monorail system at Walt Disney World. I don’t have the patience for certain types of photography, i.e., wildlife, but I will wait for the next monorail to glide past me. I’m looking forward to my next trip to WDW in May, as the updates to Epcot around Spaceship Earth have been completed. This will give me more opportunities for monorail images… 🙂