Old Photo: Cinderella Castle at Christmas

Cinderella Castle in the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World shines with the “Dream Lights” added for the Christmas holiday season in this photo from 2011, the latest entry in the Old Photos posts.

One of the many cool additions for Christmas at the Magic Kingdom is the lights on Cinderella Castle, giving an added pop to an already impressive sight. Even if you are used to seeing Cinderella Castle normally, seeing it with these lights is a different experience.

Now that they have some impressive projection overlays for the castle, too, they can come up with all kinds of looks for the castle, changing it effortlessly from a light-covered castle to a gingerbread castle to any number of things, as is done in nightly shows. But for photography purposes, these Dream Lights are just really cool, and actually not all that hard to photograph if you are close enough to the castle.

Yes, you can see the light netting during the day if you look closely, but if you are very far back from the castle at all, it isn’t all that noticeable. They most likely won’t ruin your daytime photos, unless you zoom in pretty closely. It hasn’t been enough to bother me.

And yes, it does make me want to drape our whole house in lights to achieve a similar look. While that may be possible, I don’t think it is very likely. So don’t look for it to happen any time soon. Although it would be cool if we did decorate like that (or maybe not, according to our neighbors).

So if you can’t decorate your house like this, at least someone does and we can all enjoy it when they do. Even if it takes a trip to Walt Disney World to do it. That isn’t all bad, is it?

God is our refuge and strength, a helper who is always found in times of trouble. - Psalm 46:1

About the photo:

For this photo, I chose to give the castle a bit of a different look just for fun. To achieve this, I first converted the photo to black and white and increased the contrast quite a bit. After that, I used the selective color filter in Photoshop to give everything a blue glow. In some ways it looks more like something out of the world of Tron than what you would see if you were in the Magic Kingdom, but I like it. After first seeing it this way in my mind, the final photo looks just about how I wanted it to look.

If you are curious, here is a before-and-after look. Actually, I think the original photo looks pretty cool, too. But you can see several photos like that all around the internet, so that is why I chose to go in a different direction for this one.

Photo: A single Raw exposure, processed in Photoshop. Read more about photography tips, photo software, camera gear, and more at Steve’s Photography Tips.
Camera: Canon EOS 60D
Date: December 20, 2011
Location: Magic Kingdom, Walt Disney World, Florida