… from Mrs Macquarie’s Chair
There is some really beautiful detail in this image, you can see the projections onto the Opera House sails (LHS), the Harbour bridge climbers, the lights of North sydney.
It can be quite tricky to capture sunset scenes when shooting directly into the sunset or light source, the large dynamic range in the light means you need ot bracket your images, even when the light does become more subtle and soft as when this shot was taken.
This image is a panorama of 3 frames, with each frame bracketed, you can see the result in this by looking at the shadow detail on the opera house and the full rich orange of the sunset underneath the bridge. There are quite a few ways to do images like this, in this case I have automatically blended the individual pano frames in Lightroom resulting in 3 DNG format files, these are then sent to Photoshop to be stitched together, there is then a bit of wrangling to ensure the perspective is correct and just some usual adjustments to accentuate the scene.
What I really liked about this scene was the way the clouds, which were moving very fast seemed like waves on a beach rolling into the shore. This is a image from a few months ago at Circular quay, Anzac day sunrise to be exact.
This was taken using the B+W 10 stop filter and my 16-35mm f/4 lens, which is about a sharp as my 2 year old's plastic knife…. The combination of this lens and that filter creates 1) a fairly soft image but also more interestingly 2) lots of lateral aberrations, not just one colour, ie purple fringing, but depending on what side of the image you look at it could also be green…
Which leads me to a question for all you light room gurus.. LR is awesome for correcting this stuff, however I would like to apply the defringe (under lens corrections) to only selective parts of the image, to prevent it doing weird stuff to places where purple is meant to be 😉 ideally i want to be able just to selectively apply it to the left side of some buildings for example..
I know you can use a control point, however it only gives you a option for defringe, not the full control ie purple/cyan control…
I pulled another swifty on this one.. I had taken a test shot at super high iso just to check the composition, the B+W filter is screw in so getting the compo right is a bit harder than when using the slide in filter types. In the final exposure of 309 seconds, the two boats in the foreground where a bit on the blurry side from the movement, hence I just layered a small part from the test shot onto the final image, even at high iso it was ok and really only accounted for a tiny part of the frame. That said even at the high iso the noise control is pretty darn good anyways…a little selective noise reduction and its pretty hard to tell 😉
Exif love:
D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f8 and Shutter Speed: 309.6s
ISO 100
Out front – B+W 10 stop ND.
view large .. or go home 😉
I think I stood at this very spot almost to the day, 2 years ago! I was looking at a picture I took in mid 2012 from the exact same spot and its very interesting to see how much things have changed in the way I take a photo…not very much 😉
The city skyline on the hand, its really taking some change, over on the right at the Barangaroo site there are some serious skyline protrusions appearing 🙂
ya gotta view this one full size .. and zoom in, its not quite full res, but you can read the writing on the buildings 😉
6 landscape orientation images stitched together – the polariser really gives the sky a kick here, whilst its has created a slight dark area in the middle which had ot be adjusted in post, I think the overall deepening of the sky colour worked nicely.
Exif love:
D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70mm f2.8 @ 70mm Aperture: f10 and Shutter Speed: 1/1.6s
ISO 100
Out front – Lee graduated filter (0.9x) and Hoya CPL
This young lady came prepared, she had two cameras and was pumping out some panorama images, probably be a darn sight better than mine 🙂
It was a chilly evening, however it certainly did not deter the tourists and photo enthusiasts down on the northern side of the harbour, i was cruising over the bridge on the regular sunday run with the girls and noted that the sky was looking potentially photo worthy 🙂
It is hard to get something different here, well i think so anyway, there are so many awesome shots of the city skyline which are hard to compete with – so after taking the usual panoramic shots I thought I would go for the vertical panorama style instead…not overly different, however the human element and the pretty wicked sky gave it a little extra kick in my books.
I hope ya'all had a great weekend
Exif love:
D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70mm f2.8 @ 24mm Aperture: f9 and Shutter Speed: 1/1.3s
ISO 100
Out front – Lee graduated filter (0.9x) and Hoya CPL (this really helps draw out that deep colour in the sky.
There is simply only one reason I took this shot, it was raining and I needed somewhere to shelter and conveniently this little 'ol iron structure provided quite the respite. Rather than sit and wait and look like a terrorist for the nearby security guard, i thought i better take a photo 🙂
It was foggy, wet and sprinkling which really suited the BW option.
The rain then stopped and i went on my merry way..back to my favourite subject..the opera house, check the next post for that one…;)
