Alone at Disneyland for Fireworks from Main Street USA Tues. Night

Believe fireworks from Main Street USA in Town Square

Alone at Disneyland, Tuesday Night

By Carol Koster

Rich and Michael went on to the room the evening I shot all these photos of fireworks you see here. At the time I was into “Well, we’re here now, when will we be back, let’s stay and see/do this (whatever the “this” is at the time) now?” Sometimes thpugh when you’re tired you’re tired, and they were, so they went on back to the Disneyland Hotel. Over the course of the two trips we missed out on a lot by disregarding “We’re here, now, let’s do it.” We grabbed up FastPasses and never went back to use them, in fact we grabbed up FastPasses when lines weren’t all that bad, and never went back to use them, could’ve ridden rides when “We’re here, now, let’s do it.”-kind of thing.
 
Some people find it lonely to anticipate being in a Disney theme park by one’s self. On the few times in my life this has happened to me (one year Rich was at a professional conference at WDW and I went touring the Magic Kingdom by myself) I’ve simply enjoyed the moment, or period of time, for what it was:
 
In everyone’s busy life, you need “soul replenishment,” not just in a religious spiritual way, but in a secular mental-emotional way, too. Sometimes being by one’s self can be rejuvenating, liberating, and give you a pep of memories to recall at future times when life is too busy, too crowded, too chaotic. No distractions. No complaining from others. You can have your own thoughts and feelings and opinions and savor those. You have freedom to go wherever and do whatever. While I love being “married with a ‘tween boy,” there are times when I don’t have enough alone time to have some peace, self-determination, make choices that please and suit me, and keep my own schedule. And spontaneously, that moment presented itself to me when Rich and Michael moved on to the hotel room, and I stayed behind to see the Disneyland fireworks.
 
Consequently, it was kinda neat to empty my mind out and let the show and narration and music and group experience I was in take over.
 
Comfy non-squished spots in Town Square were, at first, hard to come by. But crowds even during Disney fireworks shows can and do shift and move around. Using that to work for me, my view became unobstructed within a few minutes of the show having started. Town Square is not the very back of the crowds on Main Street to view fireworks, but it’s close to it. With families with young children deciding at early to mid show to get out of Dodge to take their tuckered out tots to bed afterall, life became comfortable and pleasant.
 
A great technique is to use to use this as a relaxation exercise and pretend you’re taking your whole intellectual activity — and short term put a lid on it. There’s no time, space, thought process, things to think about. There is only being conscious of the visual and aural environment around you, becoming naturally one with it, keeping yourself in a simple but real state, and let it all take place, then absorb it.
 
A lot of these fireworks photos you see identified as taken by me at Disneyland at either of our trips was to attempt to get the ideal, “picture postcard”-type shot of a chrysanthemum type starburst of sparkling gems of a fireworks display.
 
That’s hard to do on an iPhone. Rich tells me there’s an App in the Apps Store at iTunes called “Night Camera” that opens the appeture of the iPhone camera when it senses the camera is being held very steady, so it takes better photos that aren’t as blurry — and hence more likely to get a hard to shoot night shot of, say, fireworks in theme parks.
 
Without that App or knowing if it would work well for the purpose of theme park nighttime fireworks photos or not, taking photos of Disney fireworks using only an iPhone is tricky, a bit frustrating, and slow. First there is positioning yourself within jostling crowds and kids and kids on their parents’ shoulders to get a clear shot. There is also the technique of having to hold up your iPhone in order to frame the subject, which act gets in other people’s way of wanting their own unencumbered view. Last, in very low light conditions, the iPhone’s factory settings don’t allow to open appetures of lens up or for low light conditions, it’s factory set to an average, and left there. In low light conditions you snap a photo on the iPhone, then the shutter closes over and stay closed over, a very long time. Fireworks go kinda quick. It’s very hard to determine if you snapped the photo at the opportune moment or if the iPhone’s processing lags.
 
So as I was taught in two years of photography at college, I kept snapping. I figured out of constant or frequent snapping it might average out to a few good, representative, pretty shots that would represent “Disneyland fireworks” in general. Then later I’d go through them and delete what was substandard. Many truly blurry, awful, indistinct, undistinguishable photos I did in fact delete on the spot and just kept trying.
 
iPhone’s camera works best, and it’s images sharpest, in bright light conditions, not so much at night for some subjects or lighting conditions.
 
It’s lens cannot zoom and crop. Consequently the Castle appears very small and obscured, and when I use the finger pinch action on my iPhone to “zoom in” on the photos I took the Castle appears as a fuzz of pink and blue and purple lighting at a horizon line.
 
For quick, fast, “can e-mail it from the iPhone”-type photos and snap shots, the iPhone’s camera works best on the fly and can actually do a decent job of photography.
 
But for some shots, let’s face it, you want a good and true camera, with a lens or lenses, with a manually-adjustable apperture and shutter speed. Disney theme park fireworks and some other low light situations at Disney are best preserved for the memory books with a “real” camera, not one on a smart phone. Go get some photography classes, too, if you invest in a truly good camera. That training and the “training of your eye” to spot good photo subjects and photo opportunities will give you a true treasure of photos to reinforce your memories with.
 
In the meantime, some of the photos Rich posted from my iPhone are obviously better than others. Just scroll through and get the idea “Disneyland fireworks”, and that being there is much better than these photos might represent!
 
Lest you get a wrong impression, yes Rich and Michael have in fact seen, in person, Disneyland fireworks displays on our two 2008 vacations there. They both liked what they saw! But seeing it “again” on a night they were tired, they elected to return to the room. I figured “No telling when we/I will come back, savor the moment here and now” and stayed behind.
 
–Carol