Day 178/365: Harry Potter Studio Tour

Today's adventure was a trip to the Harry Potter Studio Tour and a meet up with Granny L and my brother in law's family. We have been on this tour before and loved it. If anything, today's return visit was even better. It makes us so happy to see all of the cousins together and getting on well. 

The lighting was variable and extremely challenging. White balance was very hard to get right in the camera. I was also carrying a rather grumpy Bear a lot of the time. I was getting mighty frustrated with the low light, slow shutter speed and camera shake.  I have always found these busy fast paced family days out tricky to photograph. 

Just look at Rexy's face!

Then I remembered the progress I made with spot metering and decided to switch to that. From then on I started to have more photography fun and somehow Bear settled down a little. I'm still not clear about where to meter off of to get middle grey, so mostly I metered for the shadows and highlights. The red on my husband's Harry Potter scarf (I only just finished knitting this on time!), was pretty good too. 

Hmmmm, butter beer... I had two!

I really wanted a good picture of the cousins learning how to cast spells with wands. I took about a million shots here. The overhead lighting was tricky and Bear had me stuck down on the floor with her. Ideally I would have stood up a little to get the rope out of the frame. 

I also wanted a good picture of my husband and his brother with my scarves on. 

There were so many cool things to see. We really do love this tour and will undoubtedly go again. 

Diagon Alley was amazing, but hard to capture on camera. 

The massive model they used for the film was so detailed and stunning. 

It was a wonderful day of happy smiles.

The gift shop is brilliant. There is no way the kids could leave without a box of Every Flavour Beans, which led to much delight at the end of the tour. I didn't dare taste any. I am told that the soap flavour is not too bad but the ear wax one is disgusting. Bogey flavour was Rexy's favourite. 

These two are kindred spirits and dangerous together!

An absolutely brilliant day all round.