I’ve been running cleanup and restoration on my lightroom archives for a couple of weeks now. Takes a long time as things have become pretty huge.
I finally started experimenting with ‘export as catalog’ to strip out some of the bigger, cohesive sections to separate catalogs (mostly Disney trips so far). That went very well and I’ve got free-standing archives for all of our Disney experiences at this point. Probably still need a bit of cleaning, but most of the way there. Continue reading Maintenance of the LightRoom archive.→
We did the dessert fireworks in the Magic Kingdom one evening after the new fireworks show started. I’ve started rummaging through the shots from that evening and here are a few initial samples.
The brown pelicans seemed to have shifted from Cocoa Beach to the port area. I got some great shots of pelicans, gulls and frigate birds from the top deck of the ship.
I went with a more is better approach on this gallery…there are lots of Pelican shots and a smattering of other birds in here…
Once we got on board I took my long lens to the upper deck and snapped whatever caught my attention. This gallery contains shots of the landscape. I’ll have another with the pelicans and birds  next. It seems that the pelicans have migrated down to the docks from the beach since our last cruise out of canaveral a couple of years ago.
Wondering if this is NASA stuff…that kind-of looks like the VAB with updates.
Yep, I think probably it is.
Those are some pretty big dishes.
…and massive cranes…
with the Space-X landing barge next to them
Quiet little dock…very large storage tanks…
Side of the terminal meets perspective crop.
Long way to kayak just to watch us head out.
A very lonely sign
A herd of signs
Looks like out escort…a little more chill than last time (no 50 cal)
The day came to pack up and head from Cocoa Beach to our short cruise. The morning dawned bright and clear but the day promised to get rougher towards afternoon.
We headed over to Cocoa Beach a few days ahead of our cruise and had a couple of wonderfully relaxing days at the Inn at Cocoa Beach. It was a much nicer place than we’d used before for our transition days between Disney park and Disney cruise. On the first full day in Cocoa Beach we saw the Disney Fantasy pull in from its dry dock time. Here are a few shots I got with my long lens.
This is our first weekend home again after vacation. I think we’re almost caught up on sleep and feeling human again 🙂 I’ve got most of the pictures from vacation together in one lightroom archive and ready to work on. Loads of pictures to be worked through but I’ll start posting here as I make progress…I expect quite a few postings over time.
Waiting for ‘Keys to the Kingdom’ to start and taking pictures…
This was a somewhat different photographic vacation from previous trips. I picked up a 100mm-400mm lens for my SLR last winter and wanted to give it a spin. This resulted in many more cell phone and small camera pictures (for anything that needed a wide angle) and lots of long and tight shots with the SLR as swapping out that monster for something wider was a bit of a hassle. Overall I think it worked out pretty well but only the final results will tell the tale.
Our last in-park meal this year was at the Sci-Fi restaurant. Cool and cheesy in equal measures. Lorna and I were both a bit worn out by this time (and she had picked up a sort throat on the cruise with a mild fever) so we really didn’t fully enjoy our last few hours in the park.
The Sci-Fi dine-in theater. Last day in this year’s vacation.Another shot of the Sci-Fi restaurant…cell phone picture but my Pixel-XL does an amazing job in the low light there.
Vacation is over for all reasonable purposes. At this point we’re just hanging out in comfy chairs in the lobby of the Disney Boardwalk resort. Devices recharging after a last day of use and before the craziness of the airport.
Hitting the bus at 6 PM with the flight making it to Manchester by sometime after midnight. Going to be a painful work day tomorrow running on a few hours sleep for a nine hour day. Expecting that this coming weekend will be a recharge and recover time.
Lorna got a bit of a bug at the tail end of things that left her final day less happy than might have been hoped. She seems to be feeling better now…hoping the flight home is uncomplicated.
Best shot I got this time around of storm troopers on the march.Amazing chandelier in the entrance to the Disney Boardwalk resort. We only stayed there a couple of days but we enjoyed it.Final shot of the theater before leaving Hollywood Studios (our last park for this year’s Disney vacation).
A few more from this morning (large batch of originals as I was shooting pretty much everything that moved)
We’ve stayed at various places in Cocoa Beach before Disney Cruises in the past The Inn is the nicest by a good stretch and we’re almost certain to stay here again next year. Cocoa Beach has been moving from a spot to stay for a couple of days between Disney and a cruise to a destination of its own. It is a great place to unwind a bit after spending days running around Orlando doing fun but exhausting things.
Lonely piper.
Running, running, running
The bottom of a brown pelican
Coming in for a landing
….and a bit of a bumpy landing it was
Not sure that this is a crow
but he’s pretty cool looking
and seems to be looking right at me
captured sea foam in the act
A sand-piper who seems to know he’s being photographed.
