Retiring Disneyland Photographer Shares Some Fantastic Pictures

Paul Hiffmeyer has been the one behind the magical photos of Disneyland for more than 10 years, and has now announced he will hang up his Mickey Mouse ears as chief photographer at the Disneyland Resort and retire at age 70.

He said:

There was always a challenge here ... having to anticipate where the magic will happen and try to position myself to get the shot.

If you haven’t planned on something, and if you see it and you don’t have the camera ready, anticipating it, it’s gone. It’s that fleeting moment that is totally gone forever.

Hiffmeyer started taking photos when he was young. His stint as a Marine, spending some time in Vietnam during the early part of the war, didn’t stop him. When he returned to the U.S., he worked for McDonnell Douglas in Torrance and took a lot of photos there as part of his hobby.

I didn’t feel complete without a camera on me, he said.

When you’re not shooting something as a photographer, you’re always looking around for something else, and when I turned around, it jumped out at me.