Zooming in the city

Before I write a little about the photograph above let me wish all the readers of the blog a Happy Easter.  The blog has been quiet for the past few days not as an Easter holiday, but because I spent about 30 hours making my way home from Sydney and the time since alternating between trying to stay awake or asleep, depending on the time of the day.  I’m slowly returning to the correct time zone, so can hopefully once again string a few sentences together about yet another shot of Sydney.

This photo was taken on Thursday evening after my day walking along the coast from Bondi to Coogee.  I returned to the city and paid a visit to the Botanic Gardens in the hope of capturing what appears to me to be the stock postcard image of Sydney – the Opera House with the Harbour Bridge behind.  I captured that shot, and will post it here in the next few days, but having done so, and having watched the sun set for the last time on my trip, I turned my attention to the cityscape, and decided to try this zooming shot which I’ve been meaning to do for a while.

The technique here is pretty simple, once there’s a way to keep the camera steady.  While I had a tripod with me on my trip, I hadn’t brought it all the way to the beaches on Thursday so didn’t have it with me on this occasion.  I did, however, have my camera bag, and that, when perched over the inverted V that topped the wall running along the water at Mrs. Macquarie’s Point, made for quite a stable platform to support the camera.  At least stable enough for the 5 second exposure that I targeted to give me time to zoom slowly and create the effect you see above.

Adding this type of zoom effect introduces a variability to the image that wouldn’t otherwise be there.  With a scene like this a normal exposure (even a 5 second one) would be repeatable and consistent from frame to frame (at least within a short time frame before the ambient exposure changes noticeably).  However once you add in this sort of effect, each frame you take looks different because you will inevitably zoom at a different pace and at different times during the exposure each time.

I found I got the best results by starting my zoom about a half a second into the exposure and finish it about half a second before the end of the exposure, zooming at a steady pace throughout.  I actually can’t remember whether this frame was taken as I zoomed in or out (I believe it was the former) but having a relatively symmetric profile to the zoom should mean that it wouldn’t have mattered too much.  What is most important is that the zoom is at a steady rate, and that gives the evenly exposed light trails coming from the center of the frame.

The half-second buffers before and after the zoom action allow features such as the signs to register enough in the exposure to be readable and identifiable, and I think they add a nice touch to the image.

I have a few more images from Sydney that I hope to post in the next few days while I get myself back to my normal schedule and get the change to take my camera out and about around these parts of the world, so hopefully you’re not tiring of them yet.  I’ll do my best to keep them varied. By “varied” I mean that not all of them will be of the Opera House. Some? Yes. But not all.  For instance, tomorrow brings you one of the few portraits I took over the last few weeks and it’s one of a particularly good-looking bird…