DSLRUsers.com

Gerry and I headed out to East Balmain on Sydney harbour for an early sunrise session (starting before 5AM).

From the park at the tip of East Balmain we essentially had uninterrupted views over the water from North Sydney and the Harbour bridge on our left around through the Sydney city CBD and then past Darling Harbour and Pyrmont and finally around to the Anzac bridge on our right.

It was a very nice morning - warm enough to be wearing shorts and a t-shirt (even an hour before sunrise). The tide was highish and the water was still and there was no breeze, we also had nice smooth colour in the sky. However of course as is our usual these days, there were no clouds to speak of during twilight or sunrise but of course some magically appeared high in the sky overhead after sunrise

Using the 16-35/4 at 35mm I stitched a panorama from seven horizontal long exposure (40 seconds each) frames starting at 5:20AM (during twilight about 30-40 minutes before sunrise)...



of course the pano looks much better larger (than the postage stamp version above)

and here is a single frame of the Sydney CBD at 20mm



About twenty minutes after sunrise this large passenger ship came around under the bridge to dock



Finally we went for a walk down to the Darling St wharf where it was time to give the BigStopper a whirl with the sun just peeking past the city buildings...

These are all great, Rodney, but for some reason, I am drawn to the last one. The shadows make it work.

They are all very good and I like the colours. I like them
in this order 2, 4, 3 & 1. I think the foreground of the
first one takes away. I guess you can crop the ofending part
or clone it to see if it improves it.

Reschsmooth wrote:These are all great, Rodney, but for some reason, I am drawn to the last one. The shadows make it work.

Thanks Patrick - I think Gerry gets the kudos for the original idea here (at least getting out the BS's and including the rails) - I have no idea what his compo looks like tho - I didn't see it so I'll be interested to see what he did with it (he shot from further away - which what focal length I'm unsure)?

zafra52 wrote:They are all very good and I like the colours. I like them in this order 2, 4, 3 & 1. I think the foreground of the first one takes away. I guess you can crop the ofending part or clone it to see if it improves it.

Thanks Zafra - yep - I debated that too - and put it in the too hard basket - but maybe now I'll give that a go

loving the colours and reflections in the first few!

love the first two,the colour and the reflections are awesome

zsolt

Nice set Rodney. Have you considered an instagram crop on the last?

Gerry, This is a great idea/location actually. It could really come together if the clouds co-operate! It's on my bucket list.

As already said the colours and reflections are great in the first 2.

I like the #3 too. The ship contrasts well against the rest of the scene.

aim54x wrote:loving the colours and reflections in the first few!

Thanks Cam - you really should come out with us sometime

zeddy wrote:love the first two,the colour and the reflections are awesome

Thanks Zeddy

surenj wrote:Nice set Rodney. Have you considered an instagram crop on the last?

Umm whats this Instagram thing you speak of? - seriously - do you mean a square crop? if so I tried that and it chopped too much off I reckon - however I did try a 5x4 crop on another frame I shot and it looked OK

Wink wrote:As already said the colours and reflections are great in the first 2. I like the #3 too. The ship contrasts well against the rest of the scene.

Thanks Adam

I've also done a bit more work and actually post processed the pano...

I evened out the sky some, cloned out that whole area on the bottom left to simplify the whole image. I've also made a higher res version (so you can actually see the damn thing ) which you can see if you click through this image