Opera House and Harbour Bridge - Sydney, Australia

The Opera House and Harbour Bridge - Sydney, Australia

The weather hasn't been the best over the Australian summer and today was no exception. We woke up to another gloomy, wet day with showers forecast. From a photographic point of view, I had been waiting for one of these days to take some close ups of the Opera House with moody gray clouds in the background. I hopped on a train at around 2.00PM for the ten minute trip into the CBD and wandered down to Circular Quay.

More photographs from today's shoot, inside.

 

The Sails of the Opera house - Sydney, Australia

I got down to the Overseas Passenger Terminal to find a massive cruise liner docked at the terminal and blocking the view of the Opera House completely. I was a bit annoyed with my luck but decided to make the most of the day and walk around to Mrs Macquarie's Chair for some shots of the other side of the Opera House. I hadn't planned on shooting from here and I only had my 24-105mm lens with me. As a result I had to shoot and crop the images slightly to get the shots I wanted. I'll head down there with the 100-400mm at some point and re-shoot these images.

 

The Opera House - Sydney, Australia

On my way back to the station I heard the horn(?) of the ship and thought I'd go back to Circular Quay and check if it was moving. I arrived at the Overseas Passenger Terminal to find the ship heading off and the Opera House appearing from behind it. I spent another 20 minutes taking more shots of the Opera House before heading off.

 

The Sails of the Opera House - Sydney, Australia

All images on this post were captured with a Canon 7D and the 24-105mm combo.

Sydney Opera House

I had been meaning to capture this image of the Opera house for a couple of weeks but, due to bad weather, I did not get around to it until this evening. This image is a 6 image stitch, created using Hugin. More information on how I captured the images, after the jump.

I noticed the great light this evening, as I stepped out of work and decided to head down to Circular Quay to capture another image of the opera house. Thanks to daylight savings, I was able to get home, grab my gear and make it down to the opera house with about 20 minutes to spare before sunset. After scouting out a location to set up the tripod, I took a few test shots and waited around twenty minutes after sunset to capture the images.

I used a 50mm lens at f10 to ensure that the lamps and the opera house were in focus. The test shots, which I took earlier, gave me an indication of the required shutter speed. From memory, the shutter speed used to capture these images was 1.6 seconds or 2 seconds. I used auto-focus and locked focus on the centre of the Opera house, then moved into manual focus and did not change focus during the entire shoot. I also used a remote shutter release to minimise camera shake.

I then used Photoshop to process the RAW files and stitched them using Hugin.

Click here to see another shot of the opera house from a different angle.

Click here for another image of the Opera House and the CBD