In February I managed to get away to Sydney for a couple of nights with some mates who I have been hanging out with since the nineties. Apart form the enjoyment of getting some time with friends in a different place, time away from the day to day routine also means time to take some photos.
This is a multi-post series. See part two here, or just click next post when you scroll to the bottom of this post.
I grew up in suburban Sydney and spent quite a few nights out getting on the beers in the city. I even worked in the city for a time. So I thought before I went that there would be a level of familiarity with the city, I was quite surprised at how different it all did feel though. Sydney is an attractive city to visit, the cost of getting into real estate there is well beyond my budget, but the bridge, the opera house the harbour, the beaches, wow. What really struck me on this visit though was the architectural variety of the city. I really enjoyed walking around and noticing buildings like they were all brand new to me. Note though that I had not been to Sydney other than the main tourist spots for more than twenty years.
This is the first post, these are all on Ilford FP4 from a day time wander about the city. I will have a couple of other posts from the trip as well, some more black and white ones and some colour night shots as well. A couple of thoughts as I look back at the photos I took. It was great fun being a tourist and an explorer, seeing Sydney with fresh eyes. I shot almost all of these with my 24mm lens, I really like the focal length for being able to get a lot in without having to move off the footpath and stand in the road. There is enough sharpness and not too much distortion. I really like the F3s metering, there was only one bad exposure on the roll and that was down to me not holding the exposure lock.
An exception to my comment about the 24mm is this shot of the entrance to St James Station. I am usually pretty happy with my photos as I shoot them, I have done a bit of waving the lens all over the place to try to work the composition so that the thing that I saw and found interesting enough to photograph is cropped how I want it. This shot was just too wide though, I have cropped it a bit. I like this a bit better but I have made a mental note to revisit this spot next time I wander around Sydney.
Just a couple more to finish off this post.
That is it for now. back with more thoughts and images in part two before too long.
