night photography – ptanphoto

Ringing in 2018

January 1, 2018January 1, 2018Posted in Cityscape Photography, PhotographyTagged Australia, New Year's, night photography, SydneyLeave a comment

Huge huge thanks to Richard and Sandy for inviting us over to their place to catch the pyrotechnics display over Sydney last night!

They have a stupendous view, not just of the iconic Opera House and Sydney Harbor Bridge, but also of the length of the Sydney Harbor, packed with sailboats anchored all along the waters edge.

It was a most lovely end to 2017. We rang in 2016 two years ago with pretty much the same group of friends, then from kayaks on the water. This time, we had the luxury of the bird’s eye view.

Blues Point was already packed with tents at 6am!

Glad we didn’t have to wait out in the rain, then hot sun all day.

Here’s to an amazing 2017, and cheers to more adventures in 2018!

Vivid Sydney

July 1, 2017Posted in Cityscape Photography, PhotographyTagged Australia, night photography, NSW, photography, Sydney, Vivid2 Comments

It’s been a while since I lifted the camera. Couple of weekends. I just dreamt of trying to taking pictures though. Bit of a weird one. In the first scene, I was struggling to use my DSLR and wondering why the controls weren’t working until I realized Jeff had somehow managed to jam a Nikon lens onto my Canon body. In another sequence, I was using my Sony RX underwater set up, and I had a fancy rig with two strobes and a snoot, in a room with stairs that was somehow underwater and had little nudibranches crawling about.

Ah well. Anyway, we had been looking forward to joining some friends for a camping and photography trip down in Kiama last weekend, when I got felled with the cold, literally in the last minutes before we were slated to leave. Initially, I thought I could fight it off with a long night’s sleep, and we could join the gang later on Saturday, but instead I felt worse come Saturday. Boo.

Anyway, here are a couple shots from this year’s Vivid Sydney. I’m glad I got to bring my mum around to see the lights this year; she missed the festival by a couple of weeks last year.

Star rise over Turimetta Beach

July 3, 2016Posted in Landscape Photography, PhotographyTagged astrophotography, night photography, NSW, photography, Sydney, Turimetta Beach2 Comments

With clear skies forecasted for the entire weekend, it seemed more worth it to sleep in for the sunrise and stay up instead for some astrophotography. So after dinner on Saturday, we skipped up to Turimetta Beach to soak in the stars.

Vivid in Sydney

June 8, 2016Posted in Cityscape Photography, Landscape Photography, PhotographyTagged night photography, NSW, photography, Sydney, Sydney Harbor Bridge, Sydney Opera House, VividLeave a comment

I joined the crowds by Circular Quay tonight to check out the Vivid light displays over the Opera House. The quay was packed. There were dozens of photography groups clustered at the front of the cruise terminal, alongside casual onlookers armed with their iPad screens. I was lazy, and so didn’t bother setting up my tripod, relying instead on a higher ISO. Should have though; most of my images aren’t as crisp as they should be.

Decided to walk home across the bridge after too, and happily the low wall of the pylon proved stable enough to balance my camera for a couple of longer exposure photos.

Hoping to check out more displays again this weekend. This time, I’ll dig out my tripod. Heh.

Sunsets in Taveuni, Fiji

October 25, 2015May 27, 2016Posted in Photography, Travel Photography, Underwater PhotographyTagged fiji, friends, night photography, photography, sunset, taveuni, travelLeave a comment

We got lucky with the weather. It had been raining steadily the few days before we arrived, and was pretty wet the Saturday afternoon we landed. But the clouds steadily cleared up such that by Sunday evening, patches of blue sky could be seen overhead.