Sydney Opera House

In preparation for this year’s Vivid festival, I’ve decided that I would like to take some shots of the Sydney Opera House from Lady Macquarie’s Chair. Last year, I took all of shots from the other side.

I wanted to get there just before sunset so that I could get some dusk shots, just before the sun dipped below the horizon.

I love the sky colours and the greenish light on the sails. The shadows from the other sails gives an almost 3D feel to it. The test shots were promising from Lady Macquarie’s Chair and I am definitely convince that it will be amazing when the sails are lit up again.

Hopefully, it will be even more amazing, than last year, when the festival starts at the end of this month.

Here are some of the other shots I took that night.

It is not often I pull out the Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 as I mostly shoot landscape and my favourite lens being the Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8. The Sigma is probably not as sharp as the Nikon 70-200mm VR II but not bad at all for an “el cheapo” lens.

I also managed to brush up on my panorama technique. I took the panos in both portrait and landscape modes. I think I prefer the second because of the sky colours and also the lights from the office buildings in the CBD. I used my beloved Nikon 14-24mm for the panos.

Hmm, I think I stayed too long as the gates to the Botanical Gardens were locked so I had to walked back to the car the long way round.

Lady Macquarie’s Chair

Lady Macquarie's Chair

Kirribilli & Milson’s Point

I wanted to do a night shoot and try my hand at doing night panoramas, night HDR and some long exposure shots of anything spinning with coloured lights, e.g. Ferris wheel at night. The only Ferris wheel I know of is at Luna Park, Milson’s Point. As luck would have it, just as we setup for the shot, the Ferris wheel stopped rotating and closed for the night.

I took 3 exposures for this HDR (-1, 0, +1). I then tone mapped with Photomatix Pro. The water did not come out very well, there was some noise in the shadow areas. I selected an exposure that had the best reflections and brightest colours in the water. I imported into CS4 as a layer, added a mask and with a very soft brush with an opacity of around 50%, carefully painted out the bits of the water that  did not look good.  

 

Selective colouring, I exported it from LR 2.5 to CS4 and duplicated it. I converted top layer image to BW and I applied a mask to it. Using my Wacom tablet I set the opacity set to about 50%, selected a big soft brush. I then slowly painted out just the puddle of water to reveal the colours of the bottom layer.

This one was taken from Milson’s Point adjacent to Luna Park’s Ferris wheel. This is actually 2 exposures blended together. The 2 towers of the Luna Park entrance were badly blown out when I used matrix metering.  I selected 2 exposures and exported them to CS4 as layers. I applied a mask and painted out the sky and water on the top layer to reveal the colours from the layer beneath.

 

Lastly, I did a 180³ night panorama. I decided that the best spot to create the panorama was from Kirribilli which will includes the Sydney Opera House, the city skyline and Sydney Harbour Bridge. It was a real shame that some of the lights on the bridge were not working. This panorama consisted of 8 individual shots taken in portrait mode, stitched together with CS4 and tweaked in LR 2.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Flickr Tags: Sydney,Kirribilli,Milson's Point,Sydney Harbour,Sydney Harbour Bridge,Sydney Opera House,Luna Park,Cloulds,Reflections,Long Exposures,180 ° Panorama,Night,Night Photography,Selective Colouring,Nikon D700,Nikon 14-24mm

Views from the southern plyon, Sydney Harbour Bridge

Fort Denison

Sydney Opera House

Park Hyatt Sydney

boat from Sydney pilot service

southern pylon (other side)

Photographer with great taste (Nikon Camera)

bridge climbers

Bradfield Highway

Sydney Opera House

Geesh, I really need to get fit. Climbing to the top of the pylon nearly killed me. Last time that I was here, I did not have a camera, in fact, I wasn't even interested in photography. I have always wanted to come back and take shots from up here of the bridge, Opera House and the cityscape. Please enjoy..