vivid sydney 2009

Second day of the Queen's Birthday long weekend, I stayed in a bit during the day to get some rest and charged down to The Rocks and Circular Quay areas once night fell for Vivid Sydney - a festival of music, lights and ideas. I hadn't expected such a crowd and spent about 30min circling around trying to find car parking. I ended up having to lug the cameras and tripod for a 20min walk to Harbour Bridge.

Spotted a nice little church during the hike to my destination and tried to take some photos of it. My laziness to set up the tripod for just a few quick shots resulted in very unsatisfactory photos like the below.



Once I settled on a great spot with a good view of everything that was going on, I set up camp and spent four hours shivering in the cold as the cameras snapped away.



One of the highlights in the Vivid Sydney programme is Luminous - the lighting up of the Sydney Opera House sails. As I tried to capture the fast-changing colours of the sails, I finally experienced for the first time the full impact and frustration of not owning a dSLR. I could visualise very vividly in my mind a particular scene and composition for my next frame but was constrained by the limitations of my equipment - taking night shots with a compact camera in extremely windy conditions without a tripod will never work. I also did not have the luxury of going beyond two seconds for exposure settings. Hence, there was a bit of a fight over my photowalk buddy's dSLR and tripod as each tried to assume the role of 'Creative Director'. ;p

Here I present to you two of my favourite shots of the Opera House. You really can't tell from the 2.5" LCD screen on your camera whether a photo you've just taken is perfectly satisfactory or not, especially if it's a camera you are not used to shooting with. This explains why I only discovered when home that I have only a dozen pics I feel are ok enough to share publicly here in my Flickr set although I was sure I would have 200 odd photos to play with when I left the event grounds.





So, who wants to buy me a dSLR?

By the way, the Vivid Sydney Festival is still on until 14 June. Check out their website here for more details.