Magic Kingdom Portrait Session Review
To recap the drama… we requested a specific Disney photographer for the shoot based on a photo posted on the DIS that we loved and were told by Disney was taken by this photographer. But when we saw our finished pictures, they ranged from mediocre to terrible.
This isn’t just a difference in taste or style – these photos looked like they were taken by someone without even basic photographic training: shots of us in front of the castle were framed to include lamps, trash cans, and expanses of sky and pavement, with a tiny bridal couple and tiny castle somewhere in the middle. In many shots the camera was slightly tilted so that the castle listed to the right or left behind us; blurry and closed-eye shots that never should have been included were; there were people walking through the backs of shots; glowing exit signs were not framed out of shots; and an extremely clumsy Photoshop job had left one picture with black lines and a burnout in the middle of it.
Who dat?
Also, any pose suggested by the photographer came out looking awkward or downright ridiculous. Why on earth would you pose a short groom in the background with a tall bride in the foreground looming over him like the 50-Foot Woman?
New Incredible Shrinking Groom ™! So compact, you can carry him on your bouquet! (Random stranger in background sold separately)
And why would you tell said gargantuan bride to stand on a bench and tower over her groom?
”See, when I Photoshop out the bench, it’ll look like you’re levitating!”
Even the “money shot” on the bridge to Frontierland — the one that was our entire reason for doing the photo shoot—looked like it was taken from Adventureland, the camera was so far away from us and the castle.
What really got us was how much money we’d paid for photos that weren’t even Photopass quality, let alone the quality of many of the Magic Kingdom photos posted by brides on the various message boards. We worked with Disney Photographic to have them do what they could in Photoshop, but there wasn’t much that could be done to the ones that were poorly composed. We were also dismayed that Disney implied that our shots were “unique” instead of crappy and acted like they were doing us a
favor by making the photos look halfway decent. As a pro photographer friend told me, “If someone told me they were unhappy with pictures I’d taken of them, I wouldn’t reply, ‘Many other people will be asking for photos that look unique like yours’!”
So now our “fixed” pictures have finally been posted online. ...But I’m not putting the link in til the end of this installment because I want someone to actually read the rest of it!
... I got up at about 4am to do my hair and makeup for the Magic Kingdom photo shoot. Originally I was going to have Patricia Lejeune come back for this, but the more MK pix I saw, the more I realized that they are shot from so far away you can barely see anyone’s makeup (if I’d only known then just HOW far away, I might have slept in a little later...). The tricky part was styling my hair—I ended up with a low-rent version of Patricia’s fabulous updo featuring more bobby pins than hair.
It was fun to get back in our wedding clothes, and we got some congratulations as we walked to the front of the Beach Club to meet our Disney photographer. As we piled into his van and set off for the Magic Kingdom, I sensed that he was slightly threatened by the fact that we’d used an outside photographer for our wedding. He wasn’t aggressive about it the way some Disney photogs reportedly are, but I wished I’d let DH in on how delicate the situation was. As he yammered on and on about how great the Roots are, I was trying every facial and hand signal I could think of to get him to cool it, all of which were lost in the pre-dawn blackness. When our van pulled up to the hub in front of Cinderella Castle, I finally had a chance to whisper under my breath, “Ixnay on the ootsRay!” when our photographer got out.
What a good photo looks like
First up were the stock poses in front of the castle. We got to throw in a few of our own, though. You should have seen the photographer’s eyes bug out when I said I wanted to recreate Luke & Leia’s pose on the Star Wars poster. He sputtered, “You’re going to lie on the
ground?!” I was totally over worrying about my dress – the thing is polyester! You can throw it in the washing machine! So DH raised his arms above his head, clasping my bouquet as a light saber, while I lay on my side and wrapped myself around his leg.
Unfortunately the paths up to the castle and through it were blocked off, so we didn’t get to do any of the close-up castle shots I like or that neat one looking through the castle and back down Main Street, U.S.A. This was pretty disappointing – it’s not like we’re ever going to do this photo shoot again. So our next stop was Main Street, U.S.A. We got one or two good ones here, but again we were hampered by the awkward poses our photographer suggested. For some reason there are a bazillion shots of the ceiling of the movie theater with a tiny me in the background stiffly holding up the building with one arm...
”So… how do you guys hold this thing up when I’m not around…?”
There are also numerous bland shots of DH in front of the “puppets” sign above one of the Main Street shops because, you know, he’s a puppeteer. Eh? Eh? Anyone...? About the only action in these pictures is the truck driving through the back of some of them.
Off to Frontierland! This picture was the one we knew we had to have (and I think it’s OK to post here because the lovely bride has it in her signature on the DIS). I love the way the sun is just beginning to rise and the castle is glowing behind them. About the only thing glowing in our picture is a lamp that was either added to the bridge before we got there or Photoshopped out of the picture we liked....
Thank goodness for Photoshop – Disney eventually removed our lamp digitally, though I still think you need a magnifying glass to know who we are!
Next we walked around the side of the castle to take some shots of me on a bench looming over DH and then us blocking the Cinderella fountain. Grrr…
”I’m gonna need you guys to move a little to the left – I can still see the fountain…”
We got to go up on the side of the castle for a few shots – I was surprised how close to the ground that landing is. In most brides’ pictures, it looks like they are waaaaaaay up on the side of the castle! Then we got a few shots in front of the mosaics in the blocked-off passageway through the castle (complete with workers walking through the back!) and posed for some pictures with an exit sign, er, I mean a suit of armor in the lobby of Cinderella’s Royal Table.
Now I have to say that the experience of taking pictures in the Magic Kingdom before it opened was great. We were a little nervous about how they were going to turn out even then, but we mostly just tried to enjoy that special opportunity in the park. I’m just not so sure the experience alone was worth the dough for us, and the resulting photos certainly weren’t.
Oh, and for those who were keeping score, I didn’t end up using the fake bouquet I brought because my real one still “looked good from the back of a galloping horse,” as Grandma used to say.
Here’s the link to all our Magic Kingdom pictures. These are mostly from the second round of fixes, with a few third-round edits thrown in at the end of all the second-round ones.
http://s350.photobucket.com/albums/q428/WorstMKPixEver/
Maybe you could just make some up!
OK!
h
