Burning Skies over Sydney…
by Rodney Campbell on Oct.24, 2013, under Life, Photography
Sydney (well most of Australia) is heading into bushfire season and we’ve started early this year with a couple of large fires burning in areas west of Sydney. With high temperatures and strong winds it was particularly bad today and a huge pall of smoke has been blown over Sydney towards the ocean. With the skies filled with smoke and haze and interesting light happening, I decided to head down to the harbour (Blues Point Reserve) for sunset to see if we’d get some colour in the sky.
It was also a chance for me to try my new Formatt Hitech 3 Stop Reverse Grad filter I’d purchased recently to use with my Lee Filter system.
Note: These photographs (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger – so click any of the images below to see larger versions in an inline overlay slideshow gallery viewer.
Early on it wasn’t looking promising with the skies just going very dark with a very thick bank of smoke blowing through the skies, but just as sunset hit the skies started lighting up with fabulous colour. Shooting west almost into the setting sun – it’s just dipped below the horizon a fraction to the left of this frame…
Fire Lines
NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 24 mm, 1 sec at f/11, ISO 100
I was literally bathed in glorious light – looking around for a moment I could see the skies were going insane over the city and the colour was extraordinary – so a quick spin about and recompose to take in the Sydney Opera House and the Sydney CBD just five minutes after sunset
Sydney on Fire
NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 24 mm, 1.60 sec at f/11, ISO 100
The fabulous colour in the sky lasted for quite sometime which was pretty unusual – this is a few minutes before the tail end of the intense colour at 10 minutes past sunset
Pink and Purple
NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 34 mm, 4 sec at f/11, ISO 100
Sydney a Glow
NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 34 mm, 8 sec at f/11, ISO 100
and fifteen minutes after sunset the intense glow in the sky faded to more muted colours, the lights in the buildings had come on and it was time to try to capture some cityscape scenes with twilight colour still permeating the sky
Twilight City
NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 34 mm, 31.00 sec at f/11, ISO 100
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