It’s Just a Fan­tasy — © Copy­right 2012 by William Beem

It’s Just a Fantasy

Some of my friends recently took a road trip to West Vir­ginia to pho­to­graph moun­tains and water­falls. I found this one in Orlando about 45 min­utes from my house. It’s just a fan­tasy. It’s not the real thing, but some­times a fan­tasy is all you need. (Yes, I lis­ten to Billy Joel).

This is another scene from the new Fan­ta­sy­land area that I saw dur­ing the annual passh­older pre­view last week­end at Walt Dis­ney World’s Magic King­dom. Believe it or not, I walked right past this water­fall in broad day­light and never noticed it. That’s what hap­pens when you’re intent on a sub­ject. You can miss some­thing bet­ter right along your path. As I men­tioned yes­ter­day, the “Be Our Guest” restau­rant that I planned to shoot was a big let­down for me. This scene was right out­side on the left, though.

The cas­tle at the top appar­ently belongs to some beast. It seems like one hell of an eye­sore to me. I could also do with­out that blue light on part of the water­fall. Some Dis­ney Imag­i­neer prob­a­bly fig­ured that’s what makes it mag­i­cal, so what do I know? I’m actu­ally quite impressed that Walt Dis­ney World built a scene like this one just as part of the atmos­phere. As far as I can tell, you aren’t meant to inter­act with any part of it, includ­ing the cas­tle at the top. It’s just for looking-​at. That’s why it’s just a fantasy.

To get this shot, I had to hang my tri­pod over the wall of the bridge lead­ing up to the restau­rant. Any­time I setup my tri­pod at Dis­ney along an area where peo­ple walk (which is any­where), oth­ers come along behind me and try to get the same shot with their mobile phone. Since it was dark, they were try­ing to get that shot using flash. That amuses me. Those lit­tle bursts of flash prob­a­bly travel about ten feet. They look at the results with some con­fu­sion and try again. A few of them prob­a­bly got a nice shot of the back of my head, but not the water­fall. Some­times you don’t need more light. You just need a tri­pod for a long exposure.