Photo Friday: Jungle Lanterns

Jungle Cruise is always one of my favorite attractions to shoot. Since it's opening, it's literally grown into its own ecosystem. Let alone the amazing queue, the shots are limitless. After buying a 50mm lens, I had some fun with focal length on here, and this shot turned out a lot better than I originally thought! 

Disney/Pixar: Why I Love the Magic of a Mouse and Lamp

Waiting for the parade to start..

Growing up, Disney was a large part of my childhood. Between going to the theater to see the latest film, exploring Disneyland, and laying in front of the TV on Saturday mornings watching Pepper Ann and Recess, Disney was there. It was one of a few pillars in my life. The movies taught me lessons about life. I learned from Aladdin to always stay true to yourself, and if you judge a book by it's cover, you'll more often than not be wrong. Or I learned from The Little Mermaid to always pursue your dream, even if it's not what people think you need in your life. Those are a few to list, and I could go on for days, but that's besides the point.

Disney apparently is a great thing to love as a child. But as a teenager, not so much, according to some of the kids I went to high school with.

See, when I was in high school, I was sort of a floater. I was never in one specific crowd, and I moved from group to group. I never really had a place of my own, but more a place of their own that I visited. I enjoyed hanging with some of the jocks, some of the anime/emo kids, some of the preps, some of the bookworms. I was fascinated by everyone because they were all so uniquely different in their own beautiful way. But people didn't always see it so positively in return.

When kids heard that I was a huge Disney fan, went to Disneyland once or twice a month just to hang out with my friends down there, it was a bad thing to them, and they called me a variety of names. From a freak, to even questioning my sexuality, I was berated for something I loved.

It was hard. Eventually I stopped talking about it because I didn't want the grief from my peers. I didn't want to hear people calling me a freak, or gay because I liked Disney. I knew I wasn't what they said, but I believe that if people hear something negative long enough, they'll start to believe the lies as a truth.

Now that nearly four years has passed, I'm already graduated with an AA, moving onto my Bachelor's degree, married, and still enjoying the company more than ever, I learned something new yesterday as I watched a 20-minute special on Netflix about Pixar (Inside Pixar is the name, and if you get a chance, WATCH IT).

Some, if not most of the short documentary areEVER give up on what you believe in.

things I've already seen, but yet to actually visit (open them doors for me, Luxo!). But listening to John Lasseter speak about the early years of Pixar, and how he was fired from Disney for going around his boss to make a film he so passionately believed in, only to now be the CEO of Pixar, and Chief Creative Officer for Disney's Imagineering department, I learned again, just like reading so much about Walt Disney, that you can never, EVER

20-something years later, still at Disneyland. This time with my wife, doing long exposure photography.

Never give up on those dreams, because without them, where is the warmth that this world so desperately needs? Where are those happy stories that we escape to on-screen? Where would all of those be without an idea, and a dream that someone had?

I'm over being called a freak, or the logic of 'only gay guys like Disney' (football players, you know who you are, and you should be ashamed of yourself for this type of talk). Over the last four years since high school, I've learned so much about the company I one day intend and hope to work for, and I have made some amazing friends in wonderful departments who are now mentoring me and helping me fine tune details I need to iron out before I apply for my name badge at the Mouse. I'm over the negative outlook on MY dream, because I'm going to do what it takes for it to happen. I want to be apart of a team who's goal is to make stories come to life, and inspire the next generation of kids to dream just like Walt did, and just like I'm trying to do.

You can never let people get to you, no matter how hard it may be sometimes. At the end of the day, the people who are talking down to you aren't the ones who will help you anyways. They don't believe in your dream, so why let them influence it? Find the people who see things the way you do, and build each other up. Maybe someday people will realize they're wrong. If they don't, then you've still won, because your dream became a reality. 

Photo Friday: Entering The Mansion

A lot of photos I shoot are at Disneyland. It's my favorite place to shoot, because you can hardly ever look at something the same way twice. This was shot while hanging out with a good friend of mine, while closing out the parks. Both of us were running around New Orleans Square taking photos of the empty park. This was shot off the new 50mm lens Hailey and I bought. It's a lot trickier to use at first, because it's a fixed lens, and you have to walk around more to set your shots up, over relying on the zoom.