The Coat Hanger

The Sydney Harbour Bridge (also known as the coat hanger), Australia

I went to the Opera House on Sunday evening hoping to capture a completely different image but came away with this one instead. No complaints. For those of you who are not familiar with Sydney, Sydney-siders often refer to the Harbour Bridge as the "coat hanger", for obvious reasons. It's not too easy to take photographs around the Opera House as it is always full of people and inevitably someone walks into your frame. The area around the Opera House doesn't quieten down till the early hours of the morning as there are a number of bars and restaurants in the area. The marquees in the foreground of this image are actually from the Opera Bar. Read on for more info on how the shot was taken.

The final image was actually created by stitching together 6 separate images. I used the tripod and the same aperture, shutter speed and ISO (I shot this on manual mode) for all the shots. When capturing these images I made sure that I had at least a 20% overlap.  This makes the stitching process a whole lot easier as there are more control points available.

I am not too happy with the top of the marquee which can be seen on the bottom right hand corner. There was a lamp just above it ,which lit up that section of the image a bit too much for my liking. However, I do like the light reflected in the water and the different shades of blue in the sky, created by the setting sun. These images were captured at around six in the evening just as the sun dipped below the horizon.

I used the Canon 7D and the 24 - 105mm lens.

Sydney Opera House and CBD

The Sydney Opera House and CBD

I hadn't been out with the camera for a while and since I had some free time on Sunday, I headed down to Milsons Point, on the north shore of Sydney Harbour. I timed my trip to get down there at around sunset as I wanted to have a bit of time to set up before the colour of the sky changed to that special shade of blue. Unfortunately the weather in Sydney hasn't been good and the sky was cloudy. Not a real surprise considering it is the middle of winter!

More info after the jump.

I set up the tripod on the wharf and started capturing the photographs which I needed to create the panorama above. The wind was not too strong but I found that the Tripod was shaking and, as a result, the images were not too sharp. In order to get around this, I had to stand next to the camera and block the wind. Thankfully it was a quick fix and seemed to resolve the problem. I zoomed in on the back of the camera a number of times to make sure the images were tack sharp.

I captured seven images to use for the panorama above. Once I got home all I had to do was process them using the identical settings and stitch them up to produce the final image. The panorama has to be viewed large to see the detail in the buildings. The version I've uploaded here is quite a small version of the final image.

The most frustrating part of this process was trying to capture images which didn't include any boats.  This was almost impossible considering Circular Quay is just to the right of the Opera House. Circular Quay is the hub of Sydney's ferry system and as a result, has ferries coming in and out throughout the day.

Other images of the opera house

• Opera House and Harbour Bridge at Dusk
• Opera House at twilight

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

Sydney Opera House & Harbour Bridge

This shot was taken from Mrs Macquaries chair. Most of the other photographers left soon after sunset. They weren't around when the sky turned orange.

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 Sydney CBD