Disney Photography Session at the Animal Kingdom

Considering a family documentary photography session and don’t know which park you should choose? Animal Kingdom is the answer! Animal Kingdom offers up a lot of opportunities to explore and enjoy yourself without rushing from attraction to attraction. This is especially great with little kids who want to get out of their strollers and run around.

This session with the Jones family is one of my absolute favorites, because we wandered and explored the park at leisure. It’s also a favorite for me because of the light. It was foggy and overcast and took a long time for the sun to come out and burn off the moisture in the air, but this made for some beautiful soft light (not the norm in Florida!).

We hit up Kilimanjaro Safaris early in the morning and went from there. Took a stroll through Gorilla Falls, where the hippos and meerkats reign surpreme. Don't sleep on these trails, friends. They are fantastic. And while I know it’s not always ideal to do so, because attraction wait times balloon so quickly these days, but hitting them up early in the morning is a great thing to do If you can.

After Gorilla Falls the timing was right to walk right into the Festival of the Lion King. Are shows the best “use of time” during a session? Maybe not. But if they are a part of your plan for the day, I say we go for it. Because the whole point is that you do what you would normally do, and I’ll capture it.

Next up, ice cream. And a scavenger hunt on the Tree of Life trails.

Spend enough time around the Tree of Life and you’ll come out on the other side of the park, whether you intended to or not. But once you know they’re there, they become an oft used short cut. In this case, we found ourselves in Dinoland.

I’m going to miss the Boneyard so much. It’s such a great space for kids. And a great way to entertain younger ones while older ones ride Expedition Everest or Dinosaur, which are both close by.

We ended our morning together with kitschy roadside Dinoland, which is sadly already gone. Though I’m excited to see what they do with this area in the future, I will always miss this roadside treasure. Glad to have captured so many memories here.