When I found out a few months ago that I would be travelling to Sydney on a work trip, I knew that there were two photographs in particular that I wanted to come home with. One, which I posted here last week as one of seven images that had no accompanying text (it’s number 6 in that set), is an updated version (using a better camera and lens) of a five-year-old image of the Opera House, and had to be taken from a boat. The other was the photo you see here – my take on the standard postcard shot of Sydney that you see in newsagents all over the city – the Opera House framed by the Harbour Bridge.
The opportunity to take this particular photo only presented itself on my last night in the city, so I was thankful for cooperative weather, and a pretty nice dusky sky. I took this shot from Mrs Macquarie’s Point, which wikipedia describes as a “popular lookout position”, and they’re not wrong. The evening I arrived there, having strolled through to Botanic Gardens after my return from the Bondi to Coogee walk, it was thronged with photographers.
Most were more prepared than I was for an evening taking photographs of the sunset and of the city – both in terms of their photographic equipment (tripods, a range of lenses, filters) and their clothing (long trousers and jackets – I had dressed for the beach). Nevertheless I sat there alongside these photographers from all parts of the world for about an hour, and much as I had done the previous week down around Circular Quay, waited for the light to be just right.
For this particular photo, I targeted an aperture of f/8 to keep reasonable depth of field, and initially set about increasing my ISO as the light fell, while trying to maintain a shutter speed at something reasonable (1/30s or so). I quickly found myself up at ISO 3200, not liking the noise that I was having to live with and longing for my tripod. Not wanting to spoil this key shot that I had been thinking about for the previous two months with excessive noise, I changed approach and dialled my ISO back down to 200, and found a way, using my camera bag to straddle the low wall that runs along the water, to create a platform that was relatively stable – this was to be the same approach I would use later for my zooming shot of the cityscape off to my left.
The shutter speed, at the time that I was liking the balance between the ambient light and the artificial lights illuminating the Opera House and Harbour Bridge, was 13 seconds, and in reality probably just beyond the capabilities of my improvised camera support, as the lights on the bridge in particular look like they are showing the signs of a little camera motion.
What is a pity is that, at the time, on the back of the camera this shot looked absolutely perfect and I was convinced I had nailed it. A consequence of the longer shutter speed is that the water softens, which is a nice effect, and the clouds in the sky smoothen out a little also (they were moving), which I actually find a little jarring, and something that probably enhances the sense that the camera moved during the exposure – I don’t think it moved as much as the image might first suggest. In fact, if you just look at the Opera House it seems like the camera was pretty steady – maybe it’s an optical illusion with the bridge. I’ll be interested to see how this one looks in print.
If I’m not happy with the printed result I do also have the higher-ISO versions from a little earlier, and maybe I’ll find the noise less distracting. I do really like the image, however, and while it is not exactly original (you’ll easily find thousands of versions of it on the web I’m sure) it is mine, and a nice memory of my couple of weeks in Sydney.
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