Expedition Everest – Robert Clutsam

My family and I have visited Disneyworld for the last three years. One of the parks we love to visit is Animal Kingdom. On this particular visit in October, my wife had somehow talked my 9 year old little girl into accompanying her on the Expedition Everest ride. Me being who I am, and my 7 year old daughter being who she is, we declined and chose to go for a walk while they rode.

I knew where I wanted to go because last year I took a similar shot of the lake with the ride in the background. This year I chose several vantage points to compose my shots. The sun was high and I knew that if I did not bracket the shot I could end up with blown out highlights or really dark shadows. I setup my camera and shot three brackets on each shot, -1, 0 and +1.

I did a traditional process on the photos in Lightroom 5 and liked what I saw. I then chose to run the shots through Photomatix to see what happened. I know there are two schools of thought on HDR but I liked what I saw when it came out and thats what I went with. I finished the photo in Photoshop (CS6) with some levels, curves and a few other final adjustments.

This photo was shot on a Canon 7D using a Canon 24-70/2.8 L series lens. The ISO was 100 with an aperature of F8. The shutter varied with each bracket.

I appreciate the opportunity to share the photo with everyone and I hope you like it.

Rob