Finally, we are here in the beautiful city of Sydney. For a city like this, you don’t really need to research on photography spots, as there are so many along your walk through the streets. You will certainly have the iconic Sydney Opera House in hundreds of compositions. But if your time is limited, you’d better make that one morning or sunset shoot count. Here are a few Sydney photography spots we enjoyed.
From the Sydney Harbor Bridge
This is an excellent sunrise spot. From this bridge, you get an elevated view of the harbor and the Opera House. If you are lucky as we were, the sunrise paints the sky and clouds into a vibrant canvas, leaving the easiest part – pressing the shutter – to all the speechless spectators.
The only restriction/difficulty here was the iron net blocking the view. I had to stick my camera out of the net to make this panoramic image handheld. For longer exposures, a mini tripod comes in handy. You can also put the camera on the flat surface as Tammy did in this picture.
At the corner of this viewpoint, you also have a brilliant perspective of the downtown skyline. The gentle, warm morning sunshine was a plus here.
The Luna Park
This is a perfect location to photograph the Sydney Harbor Bridge with the Opera House as a decoration in the frame. Since the Bridge is close to you, your wide angle lens exaggerates its proportion to the distant Opera House. Night photography of the city could be very easy when you come to the right place at the right time – you just need to load the camera on a tripod, use a shutter release or the self-timer function to avoid camera shake, and the picture is done. However, we arrived at the spot a bit late that the dynamic range of the scene became higher than optimal. For this particular shot, I took three exposures and blended them together in Lightroom, to preserve details in both highlights and shadows.
Sydney night cityscape from the Luna Park
Broughton St Lookout
It is very close to the Luna Park, and right in front of a small parking lot (GPS coordinates: -33.849302, 151.213484). I like the view of the curved road with street lamps on in early morning. Maybe after a light rain, it could show more tranquility than this shot.
Taking a panoramic shot like this could be tricky, especially when handheld like what I did. The merging to panorama function in Lightroom sometimes fails to stitch the detail patterns (like the fence, road curb etc. ) correctly.
Mrs. Macquaries Point
Probably the most classic (and also most visited) one of all the Sydney photography spots. You can tell how popular this place is by looking at the carpark meter, a whopping 8.7 AUD per hour. The first time we came here, it was a quiet morning, without the dramatic sky. I knew this was a sunset location but I was hoping to capture a sunrise time lapse, showing the moving shadows on the Opera House. However, the rising sun was blocked by clouds so it turned out to be an unsuccessful attempt.
The next time we came here, it was right before sunset. When I was presented with such a grand city skyline, I couldn’t help taking a lot of panoramic pictures.
Sydney Opera House and city skyline
I hope you enjoyed these Sydney photography spots. I know there are many many more locations to be discovered and experienced. We just don’t have enough time for every one of them. Please leave a comment below if you have other exciting locations!
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