Pic(k) of the week 32: The sun is setting over the Sydney Opera House

Whenever I go away on my airline travels as a pilot, I try to do some photography in my spare time. Planning ahead for these mini-photography shoots is essential if one want to be productive and efficient.

Earlier this morning, I landed in Sydney, Australia for a 36 hour layover after a 13 hour direct flight from Dubai. I had planned to sleep through most of the day and then head out at 4pm to Farm Cove, part of the Botanic Garden. Looking at Google Earth and with the help of the free iPhone/iPad app, Stuck on Earth, it looked like this would be the perfect location to photograph the Sydney Opera House and the adjacent Harbour bridge in sunset light. 

Australia is presently in the middle of Winter, with sunset times around 5.15pm. After having done some online research, I knew that I could take a shortcut on the way up walking through the Botanical park, but that I would have to come back the long way because of a 5.30pm park closure time.

As I'm writing this in the early hours of the Australian morning, I have not completed the editing process of all images, but I do have found a few that might make it into my Architectural portfolio. Hesitating between two photos, I asked my social media followers (Facebook/Google Plus) which one they liked the most...

2013 Pic(k) of the week 32: The sun is setting over the Sydney Opera House

The image above of an Opera House bathing in beautiful post-sunset light, is what the majority went with! The scattered cloud layer was almost exactly what I was hoping for, when I first saw the weather forecast a few days ago... I used a total of 7 bracketed shots, to increase the dynamic range in the image and merged them all together into a 36 bit image.

If interested, the second image which was shot about 20 minutes later, can be found here.

Image details:
FujiFilm X-E1 with 55-200 Fujinon
ISO 200, f5, 111mm (full frame equivalent), f5, 7 varying shutter speeds
RAW development in Lightroom 5
Merge to 32-bit HDR in Photoshop CS6
Further development in Lightroom 5 after

As there is little outdoor photography to be done in Dubai over the Summer, I've also tasked myself in rebranding/reworking my website. This process should hopefully be complete in a week time.

Till then, remember, "Being an Architect isn't only about construction, it's about creating wide spaces with small spaces"- Yannick Heywang

BJORN









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