WATER PARK
Making a Splash
“The water may have been cold, but I sure felt like I was in the hot seat! Working around both unfavorable weather and last-minute installations was a fun challenge.”
This is one of the few places where you can see the ocean from the inside of a water slide.Water parks can be relaxing or exciting, depending on whether you’re floating on a lazy river or diving right into the deep end. My experience shooting the brand-new Island Waterpark at Showboat was much like riding a water slide: full of twists and turns, and over too quickly.
Planning shots strategically (and a little bit of post-production magic) helped make the most out of a shortened shooting window.
The bright sun-shaped motifs in the entryway offer a preview of the excitement inside.E.P. Guidi, the construction company behind the now-largest indoor water park in the U.S., asked me to shoot some photos to coincide with the park’s grand opening. Last-minute preparations and bad weather narrowed the shooting window down to three hours on opening day, but Benson Photo is always up to the challenge.
Even though I was indoors, the park’s glass exterior limited my shooting window to clear days — a rarity during rainy season.Knowing that workers would be busy completing touch-ups on the ground level, I took most of my shots from platforms around the park. I also repeated some of my overview shots at different times throughout the shoot, so that I could create the best composite shot among them in post-production.
Note the workers and construction equipment I was able to remove from the second shot.
Here’s an overview of the park that I was able to put together from multiple frames.“Photographing this park in three hours was probably as action-packed as a day spent playing in it!”
