Iconic Sydney - Australia

Harbour Bridge - Sydney, Australia

I hadn't taken any photographs for sometime so decided to get out with the camera over the weekend. I drove down to Milson's Point to photograph the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. My shot list for the night included a panoramic photograph of both icons. I also tried a new 2:1 ratio on the photograph above and thought it came out pretty well.

More photographs inside.

Harbour Bridge and Opera House - Sydney, Australia

I got there at dusk hoping to be able to include a clear blue sky in the photographs but it was cloudy and grey. However, I liked the fact that the setting sun brought out the details on the underside of the bridge. Fortunately there weren't any people around to walk into the frame and I manged to fire off a few "keepers".

Harbour Bridge and Opera House - Sydney, Australia

The panorama above was a 4 or 5 image stitch. I would have liked the left hand side of the image to be a bit brighter but short of getting there earlier, there wasn't anything I could do. Maybe another drive down to Milson's Point is in order?

 Opera House - Sydney, Australia

These photographs were taken with the Canon 7D and the 24-105mm lens. I also used a tripod for all these shots. An aperture of f14-16 and a shutter speed between 20 seconds and 30 seconds was used for all of these.

Observatory Hill - Sydney, Australia

Observatory Hill - Sydney, Australia

I've been going to Observatory Hill over the last few weekends to try and photograph the Sydney Harbour bridge. I was after a couple of specific shots ( a couple of panoramas) and most of them required warm light. However one of them, the second in this post, had to be taken after sunset on a cloudy day. As a result of all of this, I had to go back to Observatory Hill on three separate weekends.

The results, after the jump.

The Harbour Bridge - Sydney, Australia

I had to slow down the shutter speed considerably to get the light trails of a car driving down towards the bridge. I ended up using an aperture of f/22 and a shutter speed of 15 seconds to get a decent light trail. If I was to take this photograph again, I would probably compose the shot in a way that cuts out the tree in the bottom left hand corner of the frame. To me it just looks like a black spot and takes away from the image.

Observatory Hill - Sydney, Australia

I wanted to use one of the trees at the top of the hill to  compose a panorama. The light was coming in from the left hand side of the image and I though it would help define the tree and add another layer of interest to the image while balancing it out. This is probably my favourite image from this shoot.

Observatory Hill - Sydney, Australia

The tree in this shot is the same as the tree in the shot above. I wanted to capture an image of the bench facing the bridge and the branches of the tree worked well to frame the shot. Both panoramas were created by stitching 8 - 9 separate images.

I'd like to find out what you guys think of these images. If you do have a minute, please let me know via the comments. I'm particularly interested in finding out what sort of improvements you would have made if you were capturing similar photographs.

The Palace of Versailles - Versailles, France

The Apollo Fountain - Versailles, France 

The Royal palace in Versailles was the seat of power in France from 1682 during the reign of King Louis XIV. It was originally a hunting lodge but was expanded in to a palace in 4 separate phases of building. King Louis XIV's decision to move the court from Paris to Versailles was based on his need to extract more control over the government from the nobility. The Royal family was forced to return to Paris in October 1789, once the French revolution started.

More images and info after the jump.

The Palace of Versailles - Versailles, France

The palace was designed by an architect named Louis Le Vau while gardens were laid out by Andre Le Notre and the interior decorator was Charles Le Brun. The Russian Tsar, Peter the Great, stayed at Versailles during his visit in May 1717. He studied the Palace and gardens during his visit and this inspired Peterhof, on the Bay of Finland, west of St Petersburg. 

Interior Detail - Palace of Versailles

Getting into the Palace was a bit time consuming as tour groups have an allocated time and  for some reason or the other they were running late. When we actually went in, it was very crowded and you were hustled along from one room to the next. We had a good tour guide and she described the rooms and pointed out a number of the more important pieces of art and architectural features of the palace. 

A ceiling - Palace of Versailles 

The Museum of the history of France was founded at the Palace in the 19th Century. A number of the rooms were taken over to house art collections.  The hall of Battles was also created to display works depicting famous battles in French history. The palace is now home to a number of masterpieces by artists such as Delacroix, David and Renoir. One of my favourite paintings, "The coronation of Napoleon" by Jacques Louis David can also be seen at the Palace (there are two versions of this painting, the second one is at the Louvre) .

A Ceiling - Palace of Versailles

An exhibition of Japanese modern art was on when we visited the Palace of Versailles. We were very disappointed with it as placed in the middle of every room were these huge, hideous objects which took  away from the interiors of the palace. I obviously don't appreciate Japanese modern art but I feel that there is a place for everything. The Palace of Versailles was definitely not the place for Japanese Modern art. Imagine seeing a massive Pokemon-esque character in the middle of the hall of mirrors.

The Palace of Versailles - Versailles, France

These images were captured with a Canon 7D and a 24-105mm lens.

The Louvre - Exteriors

The Louvre - Paris, France

I can't believe a month has already passed since we left on our trip. We got back this morning after nearly 24 hours spent on planes and in transit and needless to say, I feel like I've been hit over the head.

I'm not sure how to start processing and blogging about all the images from our trip. I'm leaning towards randomly picking a location for each post with the aim of keeping the blog a bit more interesting. If anyone has a better idea please let me know. Now I've got around a 110 GB worth of RAW files to go through... At least I'll have something to do in my spare time for the next year or so!

I think the Louvre Museum in Paris is an appropriate place to kick things off. In this post I've decided to only cover the exterior of the Louvre. I'll go through the interior (Yep, photography is allowed inside as long as the flash is not used) in another post at a later date.

The panorama above was created by stitching 10 separate images.  I used the tripod and a remote shutter release to minimise camera shake.

Read on for more images and info.

The forecourt of the Louvre - Paris, France

This image is of the Sully Pavilion with part of the glass pyramid, designed by I.M. Pei, in the foreground. I wanted to capture the exterior of the museum in the night as, like most of the monuments in Paris, it is very well lit. It was a short stroll to the museum from our apartment in Le Marais, which was convenient. The entrance to the Museum, for those who have not pre-purchased their tickets, is through the pyramid.

The Glass Pyramid at the Louvre - Paris, France

The queue for tickets can be quite long, especially at the start on the day. It starts at the pyramid (middle of the panoramic shot above) and extends out to the Denon pavilion (this includes a section of the queue which doubles up on itself about four or five times). It then extends along the Denon pavilion, through the Sully pavilion and into a second enclosed court yard, the Cour Carree. We bought our tickets online and sauntered into the museum from a separate entrance without standing in any queues. Buying tickets online is slightly more expensive but it is worth it as you save a lot of time once there.

The Sully Pavilion at the Louvre - Paris, France

This shot of the Sully pavillion was taken from near the pyramid. The main doors, which are closed in this shot, lead on to the second courtyard mentioned above. The forecourt of the Louvre is accessible at all hours of the day to anyone. We even rode through it on a night bike tour.

The Pyramid at the Louvre - Paris, France

This shot was taken from the steps of the Sully pavilion. Walking straight from this point takes you through the Tuileries gardens to the Champs-Elysees and the Arc du Triomphe. The Denon pavilion is on the left of the image and the Richelieu pavilion is on the right.

Somersby Falls - Part I

Somersby Falls - Brisbane Waters National Park

I've visited Somersby falls on two previous occasions and spent a fair bit of time photographing the three waterfalls. I went up there again last Sunday with Dean Toh and spent a couple of hours wondering around, photographing the different sections of the falls. The panorama above was one of the highlights of the day.  More info on this shot after the jump.

*The panorama was created using ten images.

In order to create a panorama which is made up of multiple images, a tripod is essential. Ideally the images would be shot in "manual" mode so that each of them are captured with identical settings. When capturing the images it is also important to ensure that there is a substantial overlap between adjacent images. This makes it easier to identify control points between them. These control points are used during the stitching processes.

During post processing I double check all the settings paying particular attention to the colour balance, fill light and blacks. All settings have to be identical across all images to ensure the final panorama is smooth. Stitching the images together is straightforward process and can be completed in any image processing software.

This image has to be viewed large for the details to really stand out. The final image was jpeg file which was over 10MB in size.

The images were captured using a Canon 7D and a Canon 24-105mm lens.

Other Shots of Somersby Falls

• http://devwijewardane.blogspot.com/2009/09/somersby-falls.html
• http://devwijewardane.blogspot.com/2010/08/somersby-falls-part-ii.html

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