Shanghai Disneyland Street Photography

Images shot with the classic Super-Takumar 28mm f3.5

Shanghai Disneyland Park, to give it its full name.

The only Disney park I’ve ever been to.

I read up on it before I went. Saw the complaints. Watched a video or two. I hoped for the best – that it wouldn’t be too busy – but prepared for the worst.

And then I had a pretty good day.

It wasn’t too busy. Went on Tron which is a pretty good ride. Ate a backpack full of snacks and sweets. Came away with a set of pictures I can post here.

I was playing with the colour + layers style at the time. Still trying to get good at it. Still mostly failing. If you want to see what the Shanghai Disneyland Park actually looks like, this might not be the article for you.

It’s more about the street photography I was doing there, and sharing the few images I was happy enough with.

Guess the obligatory photograph-of-people-having-their-photograph-taken is as good a place to start as any.

Shanghai Disneyland merchandise

I’m a big fan of choosing a theme before you go out shooting street photography.

They focus your mind and your eye, and can also give focus to the photo set once you share them somewhere.

As good as it is to choose a theme beforehand though, you do sometimes notice one afterwards at the editing stage.

That’s what happened here with the Minnie Mouse headbands. I wasn’t deliberately looking for them in my photographs.

The fact they became their own unintentional little theme – which includes the first picture in this post – just reflects well on the Shanghai Disneyland merchandising department, I guess.

Shanghai Disneyland parade

The Disney parades are as much a staple of the parks as the rampant merchandising, and the one at Shanghai Disneyland was pretty good fun.

The challenge for me was trying to get pictures of something more than just people in costumes, because that’d be like when people shoot street performers out in public.

All too easy really.

You need something else, something more, to give it depth. Despite what you may think, none of the artistic value your subject is bringing to their own work transfers over to an average photograph of them.

Wanting to give a feeling of being there and still trying to shoot layers, I went about using the people in front of me in the images instead of excluding them.

This is what I got.

Final thoughts on the Shanghai Disneyland Park

Not bad.

I’m glad I didn’t go on a weekend, public holiday, or too soon after it opened.

A lot smaller than I was expecting. This meant it was very walkable, but there weren’t many rides that had me super excited to go on.

The actors and dancers in the parade were really, really good. Credit where it’s due there.

Expensive food. Take a backpack full of your favourite snacks and sweets and don’t feel guilty about eating them all.

Shooting street photography at a theme park was more challenging than I’d anticipated. Maybe because I was trying the colours + layers style and am still working to get it right.