Around Sydney - Australia

The Skyline - Sydney, Australia

I hadn't been out in the city with the camera for sometime so decided to go for a bit of a walk last night. I started off near Mrs Macquarie's chair near the open air cinema but didn't have any particular route in mind. I wasn't after any specific shots last night, just a walk and an an intention to photograph whatever came up.

More photographs inside.

The Opera House & Harbour Bridge - Sydney, Australia

The next subjects were the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. I'd been to this location to photograph them before (to take this photograph) but the light conditions were very different. This time I got there after sunset and the sky was a rich blue in colour.

The Opera House & Harbour Bridge - Sydney, Australia

I would have preferred to have used a longer lens for the photograph above but unfortunately, I only had the 24-105mm lens with me. I was surprised that the smaller sails of the opera house were not lit up. That resulted in the main sail being a lot brighter than the others.

Cahill Expressway - Sydney, Australia

The next stop was a bridge overlooking the Cahill Expressway. Being a Saturday night there wasn't a lot of traffic on the road but a 30 second exposure was sufficient to photograph a few light trails as cars moved to and from the city.

Chaos on William Street - Sydney, Australia

Heading up along William Street towards Kings Cross on a Saturday night is probably the worst place to drive in Sydney. Kings Cross, the red light district in Sydney, is a hive of activity with thousands of people hitting the clubs in the area. The ever present hoons add a level of stupidity to the whole experience.

The Archibald Fountain - Sydney, Australia

The Archibald Fountain in Hyde park was the last stop on my walk. Built in 1932 , the fountain was a gift to the city bequeathed in the will of J. F. Archibald. It is intended to commemorate the association between Australia and France in World War 1 and is the work of French sculptor Francois Sicard.

All photographs on this post were taken with the Canon 7D and the 24-105mm lens. I also used a tripod for these photographs.  

3/52 - Grand Marnier

A Bottle of Grand Marnier 

This shot of a bottle of Grand Marnier (Orange and Cognac liqueur) has probably been the most challenging shot, from a lighting point of view, that I've captured to date. I got the idea for this image after seeing a photograph of a bottle of Hennessy taken by Atton Conrad. Since I had only 2 lights to work with, I had to capture 5 separate images and merge them during post processing.

For those of you who are interested in the lighting, read on.
Unfortunately I didn't capture any of the setup shots as there were too many! Instead I'll describe the lighting I've used for each of the shots and upload the individual images.

Shot 1 - Contents of the bottle and the label

Shot 1 - Contents of the bottle and the label

The Grand Marnier bottle is dark brown in colour. In order to light the contents of the bottle, I placed a Canon 430 EX II directly behind it and fired it towards the camera at 1/2 power. To light the label, I used a snooted Canon 430 EX II fired from camera left at 1/16th. The snooted strobe was gelled with a 1/2 CTO. In order to control the light I played around with the aperture and finally settled on f18.0. I could have got the same effect by controlling the output of the flashes but it was easier to change the aperture instead.

Shot 2 - Defining the left edge of the bottle

Shot 2 - Defining the left edge of the bottle

The effect of this shot is subtle in the final image. To light just the edge of the bottle I fired a Canon 430 EX II zoomed to 105 mm through two sheets of white foam core board. The space between the foam core boards narrowed down to about a 1cm gap. This controlled the spill and only defined the edge of the bottle. the strobe was not gelled for this shot.

Shot 3 - Defining the right edge of the bottle

Shot 3 - Defining the right edge of the bottle

The setup for this shot was identical to the shot above but on the right hand side of the camera.

Shot 4 - Background

Shot 4 - Background

I wanted to light the background of the image a little to give it some depth. I placed a candle just behind the bottle and had the shutter opened for 5 seconds at f4.0 to capture the image above. The light from the candle was soft and warm and I felt it suited this shot.

Shot 5 - Light Painting

Shot 5 - Light Painting

This shot was the hardest to capture. I used a clear glass lined with an Orange and Red gel, filled with clear marbles and a tea light as the light source. The glass was also wrapped with dark tape to allow only a section of it to be exposed to the camera. I had the shutter opened for 3.2 seconds at f4.0. During the exposure I moved the glass around until I captured a light trail I was happy with. This took a while as it was not easy to create a decent light trail.

The image above is a composite of these 5 images.