Spaceship Earth at Walt Disney World From Morning to Night

When we are in Epcot at Walt Disney World (such as during our December 2016 visit), I take lots of photos of Spaceship Earth. I take photos when we get there in the morning. I take photos when we leave at night. And sometimes I even take photos sometime in between, too. So I thought it would be interesting to combine them together:

As you can see, Spaceship Earth goes from being a big, silver geosphere in the morning to being a big, colorful geosphere at night, thanks to some colorful lighting. Either way, it is a rather impressive sight to see, given its large size and round geosphere-ness. Then, once you realize that there is a ride that goes all up through the sphere, it becomes even more impressive, although you may not necessarily realize that while you are actually on the ride.

Perhaps you would like to see the two photos that make up this one photo, so here they are:

First, of course, is the morning view, taken just after we arrived at Epcot that December morning. If you know who to look for, you can see six of the seven members of our traveling party in the lower right of the photo, the seventh being behind the camera, which would be me. As you may remember from the other Epcot photos from that trip shared here previously, our day at Epcot was quite cloudy and overcast. If you didn’t remember it, you can definitely see it here. But that never has stopped me from taking photos before, and it did not here, either. Also, you can see the benefits of arriving early, as close to park opening time as possible, or even earlier. The crowds at that time were somewhat light, although they did get larger later in the morning, as you would expect for just a few days before Christmas.

The above photo, as you might guess, is the nighttime version. We actually did not stay until the park closed that day, because we had dinner reservations for the Hoop Dee Doo Revue at Fort Wilderness Campground, so this photo was taken as we were heading out to catch a bus to the campground. Once again, there weren’t all that many people around, although I am certain that there were more people there later in the evening after Illuminations as everyone was leaving the park, just based on past experience. Still, even though it was nowhere near time for Epcot to close, it was still late enough that the nighttime lighting had been on for a while. The slightly long exposure brought out some color in the sky, as the lights of the surrounding area were reflecting off of the clouds. But instead of trying to tone that down, I left it like it was.

So as you can see, in some ways, Spaceship Earth never changes, even though it does look different at different times of the day.

It is good to praise the Lord and make music to your name, O Most High, proclaiming your love in the morning and your faithfulness at night. - Psalm 92:1-2

About the Photo

Originally, I had not planned to combine two photos into one. My original plan for this post was to simply have two separate photos, one from the morning and one from the night. But sometime after I had finished working on the photos, I got the idea to try to put them together into one, based on some similar photos from other places that I remembered seeing sometime back.

As it turns out when I layered the photos on top of each other, Spaceship Earth in each of the photos lined up almost perfectly. Same size, same position in the photo! Almost as though I had planned it that way! Either that or I am really consistent with what I see and how I photograph it.

If you look at the resulting photo very closely at all, you will soon realize that the two photos were taken from slightly different angles. It appears that for the nighttime photo I was standing a good bit to the right of where I was standing for the morning photo. So the foreground does not quite line up, and the same goes for the triangles on Spaceship Earth. Still, I think it turned out very well. Knowing what I know now, I could actually plan for something better on a different trip. However, I am not the kind to stand there all day with my tripod in the same spot just to make sure that the photos line up exactly. Some people might do that, but that isn’t how I would spend an entire day of my vacation. But that’s just me.

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: Olympus OM-D E-M10
Lens: Rokinon 7.5mm f/3.5 Fisheye Lens
Date: December 20, 2016
Location: Epcot, Walt Disney World, Florida