Do Your Homework

            A lot of countries have either natural or man-made structures which become icons and visually define the particular country. For a travel photographer these inevitably set a challenge to try and come up with a new angle that will sell.

            In Australia recently, I was confronted by the classic combination of the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge. There are several good viewpoints to get a picture but none original. To me the best shots can often be when the light has nearly gone from the sky and the icon is illuminated. These pictures are liked by photo libraries as they can convey a sense of romance and magic.

            By doing my homework and looking at a map, it was clear that morning would have the sun at a good angle for daylight shots, so I did this first. When I got there, Macquarie's Point, the best viewpoint to take this combination shot from, was buzzing with tourists snapping away with all types of cameras, and all would get a reasonable picture of this classic image.

            I returned in the evening just before sunset and again found many amateurs, but some had tripods so were at least serious about it (some of them could have been professionals even). It was a reasonable sunset but I still augmented some shots with Cokin filters; kitsch maybe, but they add to the image. As the light disappeared, so did all the other photographers, and as it went nearly dark, I was entirely on my own.

            To have some light in the sky adds a rich dark blue to the image, and always works well. I judged when to take a set of bracketed exposures, one of which would be correct. At each change of the darkening sky I took another set, all the way until it was nearly black.

            The Harbour Bridge was lit beautifully, but the Opera House not so well. However, by eye I judged that the Opera House would be slightly overexposed when the Bridge was correct, and this would even it out and make the colour correct so as to make it stand out.

            If I had been in Australia for just one day, I would have opted to take the shot in the evening, and by doing my homework could have easily worked out when to take both daytime and sunset pictures armed only with a map and the sunset time.

            As it happened, sunset was around 7PM, a great time for that end-of-the-day drink, but as a working photographer I had to forego that pleasure and still be behind the camera. So do your homework to take better pictures; this job is not all glamour!