Capturing the Night

A bit of a delayed blog!

I had been waiting for the right opportunity to get a good skyline shot of Sydney at night for some time - largely due to logistics (finding the time and transport to get to a good spot!) In this case i was at Taronga Zoo doing their Roar and Snore experience.

The evenening session @ Roar & Snore was a night tour of the zoo and once this was complete my opportunity came! It was absolutely pouring it down with rain, but i had come this far so this didnt stop me!! With the rain still pouring, Kat and myself headed to the Bird of Prey amphitheatre with one of the Roar and Snore tour guides, i set up shot under a carefully placed umbrella and the fun began!

The location provided an amazing view of the city and the pouring rain didnt dampen my spirits, quite the opposite in fact; it provided some amazing effects, from the rippling on the harbour and the reflection of the city light to the misty haze surrounding the city. These effects all came together to provide an amazing shot of the Sydney Skyline and one of my favorite shots to date - not to mention my first night image & first use of my tripod, which i will add was very exciting! And the end result?

After taking a dozen photo's this was deemed the best in terms of composition, sharpness and exposure. However by looking at how each of the other images came out i understood more about the complexities of shooting at night. However i was truly satisfied with the end result and look forward to the next opportunity i get to do some night time photography!

This second shot is also in my flickr set and is one of the other shots i chose to process;

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Curious Cockatoo

Hungry Cockatoo
Originally uploaded by aDrunis_84

As i sat down to browse the net after a hard days work i hear Kat calling 'Aaren come quick!!' and as i looked up i noticed a little visitor had just landed on the wall of our balcony and was peering indoors.

This was almost as if a perfect opportunity had literally just 'flown' in (excuse the pun!) I grabbed my camera and chucked on my 50mm lens. The photos were that great because of the brick/window background of the building, plus i couldnt just get close enough to this timid little guy!

So after laying down some seeds to keep our new friend busy, i quickly switched to my 55-250mm lens so that i could get some close up shots from a bit of a distance and it worked a treat!! I was so lucky to get the shot here!

It was very cute how every time it was approached the bird would perch itself at the edge of the balcony as if it was about to perform a backflip off and dive into the air!

I was a bit dissapointed i forgot to correct my ISO sensitivity, something which i think resulted in a bit of noise in the image + it was quite difficult to get the exposure correct (which can be seen in some of the other pictures) however overall i am pleased with the pictures that came out.

But most of all it was a fun experience and i really hope that 'Curious George' as i have dubbed him, will return again soon!!