Tag Archives: photography

World From Above – Part 5

April 14, 2014 Sandra Graham Leave a comment

One of my favourite photos that I’ve taken was this one, shot perhaps 15 years ago, back in the days when I was still shooting on film.

When I was thinking about places to shoot for this project, I thought again of Bondi. This time I came on a weekday morning. I was surprised at how busy the place was, full of people doing all kinds of physical activity.

I remember a tourist once saying that Sydneysiders must be the fittest people in the world. My reaction was to laugh, given that I live deep in the suburbs where people were more interested in going to cafes, and much of the physical activity was done indoors in gyms. Now that I’ve been to Bondi, I know what those tourists mean.

Here, everyone was bronze, trim and terrific, jogging their nine laps of the beach or saluting the sun yoga-style. It was definitely a different world to the suburbs I live in.

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World From Above – Part 3

April 7, 2014 Sandra Graham Leave a comment

Stairs and escalators featured heavily at the QVB – it does have four floors after all.

I liked to photograph the curves – it made a change from always photographing straight lines.

And the colourful mosaic floors really brightened up things.

It made for interesting scenes of everyday life.

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World From Above – Part 2

April 6, 2014 Sandra Graham Leave a comment

After class I made my way back to the city. I planned to find some places to shoot at but the weather wasn’t about to co-operate.

I headed under-cover into the Queen Victoria Building. Good old QVB, it really is a photographer’s paradise with all its Victorian charm, light spaces, and many interesting angles. It’s one of my favourite place to shoot.

We talked a lot about white balance in class, and how certain light conditions and different light sources can affect the colour of a photo, warm to cool. It’s basically what our eyes automatically do, but what needs to be applied by the camera when taking shots. Modern digital cameras have auto-white-balance that tries to mimic human eyes, but similarly it can get things rather wrong. This function can however be used creatively to give you some interesting moods.

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World From Above – Part 1

April 4, 2014 Sandra Graham Leave a comment

For the last week of assignments we were free to do any project we wanted. I found it very hard to settle on a theme. Luckily near class I found Paddington Reservoir Gardens. What a magical space it was. On top was some interesting architecture.

But look down and I found a sunken garden.

And a library.

This shot became my project – the world from above.

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Shutter Speed Exercises – Part 2

April 3, 2014 Sandra Graham Leave a comment

More shutter speed work to capture movement, this time at my local railway station at peak hour. The commuters really did form a stream when captured at a slower shutter speed.

Slowing it down completely, with an exposure of one second, while zooming in, was great fun. This could be a scene out of a horror movie – a ghost is streaming out of the TV.

In class, we learned how to ‘paint with light’. All you need is a very dark room, a light source, and a very long exposure.

At home, I took my version of a ‘selfie’.

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Shutter Speed Exercises – Part 1

April 2, 2014 Sandra Graham Leave a comment

After the depth-of-field homework, we worked on experimenting with shutter speed. This was something I rarely did intentionally, so it was exciting to explore new or rarely used techniques. I soon found out that it was both fun and frustrating, in pretty much equal measures, but I agree with our teacher that the pictures do have more of an energy to them than the majority of ‘frozen moments’.

During class, we went out to Oxford Street to ‘play with traffic’ and pan passing vehicles. It took a lot of shots just to get something that worked well, like this cyclist.

And this close up of a car braking seemed like an accident in motion.

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Opera House at Dusk – Part 3

March 30, 2014 Sandra Graham Leave a comment

You couldn’t forget that you’re surrounded by water at Bennelong Point, but after dark, water became mysterious, even forebidding.

Whereas during the day the exterior of the Opera House dominates, at night the interior came into its own. With so much detail, it was no wonder that the building took at age to finish.

It wasn’t just the wood and concrete that was fascinating, there were also masses of steel and glass. It gave a new perspective on the Bridge.

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Opera House at Dusk – Part 2

March 29, 2014 Sandra Graham Leave a comment

It was a lovely hour to be at Bennelong Point. We waited on the steps while the light slipped away, and we weren’t the only ones.

I liked how they had lit this tree in the Botanical Gardens. It helped us ignore all the construction in front of it.

Eventually it got so dark that the people around us were just silhouettes in the night.

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Opera House at Dusk – Part 1

March 28, 2014 Sandra Graham Leave a comment

We were at the Opera House to watch Neil Finn play, but while we were waiting for the 9pm start it was a perfect time to take some photos of the dusk.

Bennelong Point was certainly a popular place to be on a Friday night.