Muki.Dorifuto.com Photography talk with random tangents into the unknown

An evening in Brisbane

I was fortunate enough to be able to go to Brisbane this last week for work.

The only time I could find to take some of my own snaps was on the evening of one of the less active days, hence all the evening shots.

I think long exposures like this one (3.2s) really highlight the flaws in my 10-20mm. To be honest, I'm finding I'm liking it less and less as time goes on.

I tried to pack light for the trip and as I'm not a big fan of lugging tripods around, I didn't pack one. So in keeping with the usual "use what you can find" strategy, a long, heavy lens works pretty well propped up against a bridge railing.

In this shot, the ferris wheel stopped for long enough to get a shot, but it had to be timed between buses that were travelling across the bridge at the same time as they would introduce enough shake to throw my shot out. I wanted to get a relatively noise-free shot, a bit of shimmer in the water, but not have the wheel completely blurred. Needless to say, I ended up shooting a lot of frames.

Up close, I didn't stick around to wait for the wheel to stop again. There wasn't much to prop my camera against in this location, so I'm relatively happy with the .25s exposure hand-held.

Shooting back towards the city from Southbank, this was a 6s exposure from my 10-20mm. The camera was on a ledge with my strap propping it up to get the horizon relatively lower. If you're ever taking a shot like this, I wouldn't worry too much about getting everything level. Get your camera really steady, use a remote shutter release or timer and sort out the rotation and cropping in post. Just remember to leave enough on the sides and not to include whatever you're using to balance your camera.

Shooting from under the bridge on a cycle-way. I sure know how to pick 'em - this bridge kept wobbling when people walked past! I must've stood there for about 15 minutes taking shots in between people walking past. In retrospect, I wish I had a slightly longer exposure. This is on my 50mm at f/8.

A last shot at one of Brisbane's other bridges. I'm actually not very happy with this shot due to the bridge getting lost in the background and a poor choice of aperture. I think by this stage I was calling it quits.

One of the things I've realised about shooting alone is that I'm initially really uncomfortable with having the camera out and looking like the tourist. After a while though, it's not too bad. Perhaps it's Brisbane, but there are a lot of photographers around. That certainly puts me at ease when having a camera out and wandering about. There's probably no better way to get over it than to just get out there and get shooting.