30 Minutes in the Life: August 2023: Sydney Opera House

This blog is probably encompasses the 30 minutes, plus a few add on’s. The Sydney Opera house is an impressive sight to see. Unfortunately we timed it badly because 10 days after we left there was a light up Sydney event and the opera house looked stunning with all these lights on them. However, it is what it is. The fact that I was there makes it so much more impressive.

An unknown fact, maybe, is that I love different kinds of architecture and I have to be honest you just have to be impressed by this incredible building. In fact there was a lot of different architecture in Sydney that appealed to me.

So what is the history to the opera house. From what I have read Sir Eugene Goossens, conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra believe that “all people, regardless of their class or background, had the right to enjoy fine music”. In 1956 a competition was created for the proposed new building. In 1954 the beginning stage to support an Opera House began. In 1957, Jorn Utzon, an unknown Danish architect was announced as the winner. The estimated cost of the design would be around 3.5 million pounds It was believed that this design would become on of the greatest buildings in the world. In 1959 the construction began. Stage 1 was completed in February 1963. Stage 2 began in 1063 and took 2 years to complete. Due to a number of issue the cost of the building had now increased to 13.7 million pounds, In February 1966, after some conflict Utzon quit the project, blaming the then Minister, Davis Hughes, of forcing him out. In April 1966, a panel of Australian architects were appointed to complete the job. In 1966, Peter Hall was asked to complete the Opera House. Initially he declined, but later accepted the request. In January 1967, stage 2 was completed. Stage 3 focused on the interiors. On October 20, 1973 the Opera House was finally opened by Queen Elizabeth 11, and on September 28, 1973. the Opera House’s first productions opened. I have radically summarized the story. Credit is given to https://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/our-story/peter-hall-and-completion-opera-house for this information. There were 6 pages of interesting reading, which if you are interested in architecture and in this incredible building it is well worth visiting the website.

Taken on day 1 as we familiarized ourselves with Circular Quay and the location of our hotel and where the rocks were etc. This building is amazing to look at.
Sunrise on day 2. The sun was coming up directly behind the building. It did cast a gray shadow on the building but it was well worth seeing.
It’s early morning, the cloud blocked a lot of the sun out but it was good to see life happening all around us.
Finally, after the sun rose, we walked around to the Opera House. Like most famous places in the world (and I think of Barcelona’s famous church Sagrada Família who, when we visited in 1987, had construction going on and it is still going on today), the Opera House was not unique. There was construction going on there as well to ruin the pictures.
Working around the construction, I knew that I wanted a photo of the steps and this couple really made it happen for me. The glare of the light in the background makes for a hazy image.
The other image I wanted was the Bridge and the Opera House, Sydney’s two famous landmarks, to be in the same image.
Looking back at the city, yup, I was there, even if it was a shadow with a (heavy) backpack of camera lens. Having said that I used mainly my daughter lens that I borrowed which was a 24-70mm lens. Mine had died a few weeks prior.
What fascinated me was just how big the architectural design of the building was. I can understand how they could have run into problems during the course of development.
Looking back towards the city, as I walked around the building. I love the flow of this walkway where the Opera Bar is situated.
There is a whole section in the link I shared that talks about the specifics of the roof tiles, and the weight of these huge spherical designed arches.
Man is small in comparison to the height of this incredible building.
The following images are taken from all sorts of angles from the base of the on the bay side of the building.
Again in this image I wanted to link the two famous landmarks once more.
I was aiming for the leading lines of the steps. This encompassed our 30 minutes of walking around this stunning building.
Leaving the Opera House grounds we headed up these steps where I would stop to take one or two more images of the Opera House
A close up on the city side of the Opera House with the Sydney Harbor Bridge, along with the Australian Flag and the Aboriginal Flag as well.
Last but not least was the view from the top of the steps in a beautiful park like area called the Bennelong Lawn.

Sadly we did not get to go inside, we were out way to early in the morning and nothing was open, but I enjoyed every minute of this architectural masterpiece.

One of the other things I wanted to get was some images from the ferry both day time and night time.

These were taken on our return to Sydney were we headed out to Watson Bay on the Saturday evening to meet up with a cousin of mine and his family. Here are a few night shots coming back into the Harbor from the moving ferry.

These images were taken the last day of our Australian trip. We headed out to Manly via the very efficient ferry system. Although there were tourists it was a little blustery, and so most of them headed inside. I on the other hand was determined to stick it out.

In the view, the Sydney Opera House, the Sydney Skyline, the Rocks, and part of the Sydney Harbor Bridge.
I really wanted a image of the Opera House with the Skyline, and this was about the best angle I could get.

Next stop will be the some of the downtown area that we got to walk through, so look out for the posts.

My friend Lupji from Lupji Photography is co-blogging with me today. Don’t forget to check his blog to see what he has been up to.

You can also find me on Facebook, and Instagram.

Stay well.

30 Minutes in the Life: Augutst 2023: Sydney

We postponed 30 Minutes in the Life last month as Lupje had a conference and since it is just the two of us blogging these days, we are open to being flexible. That said, I have been editing for the past 3 hours. Friday I spent most of the morning making a birthday cake with intricate flowers and fondant icing. It takes a while to get that all together. Saturday was a memorial service and then it was Lukie for a sleepover. We took him home after his sleep today and had enough time for a swim and hang out and then it was back home to edit. Life seemed really busy this weekend.

That said, it was back to editing our time in Sydney. These photos come from a short walk from the Oversees Passenger Terminal point along the green walk way, under the bridge, around the corner and back again. Seems short but I managed to find a lot to see.

As I have said before, is that I love the fusion of old and new. You will see it in so many pictures. I love that they have preserved the old buildings while adding in new development. We often see historical buildings torn down to make way for new and I did not get that feel in Sydney.

This is the ASN Co building and it was and is an extremely prominent building in Sydney. The Flemish styled building was designed by William Wardell. It was one of the many store houses found in the Rocks in the early years.

Walking on I came across this piece of artwork on our walk that looks like a front to a the Park Hyatt Hotel.

It was in the same area that I came across this young man sitting on a set of steps, probably listening to his phone. I used this image in yesterdays blog where we were challenged to create the Adamski effect. This probably was one of my favorite images that I created.

Moving along the walkway there were a few boats moored in a small bay area and I loved the rigging to this boat.

We arrived at Hickson Road Reserve and stopped to look back. This is just a different perspective of the Brewery, The Squires Landing and city sky line.

One thing I have to say. People were out and about running, walking, doing some form of exercise. For me, it was walking and a fair bit of it. It was amazing to be standing just below this enormous structure, The Sydney Harbor Bridge.

Across the waterway, near Milsons Point area is Luna Park, the amusement and entertainment park. I have seen some amazing pics incorporating the Opera House, the Sydney Harbor Bridge and Lunar park.

Another thing that I really loved about Sydney was the billboards showing the history of the city. There was a stretch of them where we walked. Above was the view of Millers Point from Balmain East with the Sydney Observatory in the Center c.1870

Above is the view along Sussex Street from Napoleon Street c.1890

Above, Trinity Avenue, Dawes Point, site of the present day Trinity Avenue playground c.1901.

This gave me a feel for the early days in Sydney when my grandfather would have been growing up.

Looking across and beyond the Opera House is the Royal Australian Navy Heritage Center and this large ship was looming in the background.

From what I can work out this building is the present day Arts Exchange. It was initially built between 1902-1908 for the purpose of a direct current power station. In 2015 it was restored and now houses meeting rooms and facilities along with it being a major hub for Sydney’s major festivals.

Heading back we are again looking at the Brewery and the city skyline.

I actually took this photo for our staff. We use Salesforce, USA as our platform that houses our EMR system.

The local gulls.

Again a fusion of green space, old and new. This area is the famous Rocks of Sydney. In the background you will see the Metcalfe Bond Stores which was built in the 1910’s. A feature of the building is the steel and timber columns. From what I have read there could be a gin distillery opening up there in the future.

I came across this graphic while walking along the area. The painting painted by convict artist, Thomas Watling shows two men, watching the sun rise and ship set sail on the morning tide. The board cites this painting as c1797 and goes on to share that many of the landmarks can still be identified such as Pinchgut Island (For Denison) and Kirribilli Point. The man with the telescope appears to be looking at the small hut built for the Wangal man Bennelong, on the site of what is now the Sydney Opera House.

This is a typical picture of Richard, waiting patiently for me to catch up with him. I get side tracked with what is around me.

We are back walking past the Oversees Passenger Terminal back towards Circular Quay.

While there is a lot of old in Sydney, there is also a lot of glass and I for one, would not want to be the person cleaning the windows of those Sky Scrapers.

We had a quick stop at Circular Quay to learn more about the ferry system and how it works, what the running times are and when they stop. We are going to be making use of the ferries in the coming week.

Next stop will be the Opera House, so look out for the posts.

My friend Lupji from Lupji Photography is co-blogging with me today. Don’t forget to check his blog to see what he has been up to.

You can also find me on Facebook, and Instagram.

Stay well.

Share Six: August 2023: Adamski Effect

How did we get to August. Seriously this year suddenly seems to be flying. Share Six is up again and this month I chose to challenge myself with something I skipped in another project. The theme for this month is the {Adamski Effect}. Its a very neat technique, but I was challenged with new tutorials and working with my old CS6. Sometimes I did not have the tools they were talking about or I had to get to them via a different format. That said I did what I could to try and get the effect I was looking for.

I used my Australia photo’s again to play around with this technique. It is painstaking selecting process to get the main object, and I think on a couple my selection was a little off. I also found that they talked about modifying and expanding the selection but that did not seem to work for me. Then I found on some images it would fill with content aware and on others it would not. The effects typically used a motion blur but I did do one with gaussian blur to see what kind of effect I would get.

All that said, it was fun to see how creative I could get. So some of these pics you may have already seen in their normal format and now you will see them in the Adamski Effect.

I choose this image because it was the easiest of images to start with. That said I was not crazy about the black streaks to the right of the man. It was a person and I should either have selected them as well or cloned them out. This was taken on our walk from the hotel to Darling Harbor. Australia has what I think they would call green walkways. No cars and it is the best.

This image had the tall buildings and I kind of visualized the rainbow effects being a little different. We started walking up towards Bangaroo Reserve and then kind of did a detour and I am not sure where we resurfaced but we did eventually find our way back to our hotel.

So this is the effect I was looking for, however, I was not too crazy about the giant white pole in the way but I had spent too much time on the selection and was not starting over again. I loved the movement in the tall buildings. This was on one of the main streets in Sydney, George Street, on our walkabout back to our hotel.

This is probably my favorite of the images I played with. Instead of blurring vertical, I blurred horizontal. This was taken the morning we went to watch the sunrise over the Opera House. This guy was randomly sitting on the steps listening and looking at his phone.

I honestly love the background effect to this building. The boat was on it’s way in but it feels a little awkward given the height of the buildings. This was taken from the Sydney Harbor Bridge looking back towards Luna Park – the amusement park near the Kirribilli markets.

You met this guy in my last blog of the walk from Bondi Beach to Bronte. For the most part I think I did a reasonably good selection of the surfer and I do love the effect of the slightly off horizontal blur. And who doesn’t like a surfer.

For this image I used a Guassian blur instead of a motion blur. This is such a common picture of Richard – he always has his toes in the water. That comes from growing up within walking distance to the beach and spending time out on the water either fishing, surfing, paddle boarding, you name it and he’s probably done it.

For this image I was back to the motion blur. However, I did not want to do too much so this has more of a painterly look to it. This is the 12 Apostles on The Great Ocean Road. What I will say is I think that they are down to about 6 or 7 apostles these days. This image was taken on an overcast day with lots of wind and water spray. The scenery is stunning and this will be back on my bucket list when we go back. The cliffs here are incredible and so high.

For this image I used a horizontal motion blur. I loved the colors in this image. We had visited Australia in the fall and so we got to see a lot of reds and yellows. I am not sure where this was. It could have been after we came out of the Great Otway National Park. We had taken a detour through the Park to the light house.

I did this image twice. The first time I just isolated the leaves, but then it looked like floating leaves so I redid this to get the vine in to ground the leaves. Again I opted for a slightly off horizontal effect. This was taken during our time in Melbourne where we decided one afternoon to take a drive to a wine farm. What I loved about it was that it was about 15 minutes from where our family live. I could do that easily on a weekend for sure.

This is my last image. By now I was tired of tirelessly selecting the image. My version does not have “select subject”. So it was a painstakingly back and forth to get the selection as accurate as I could. I loved the way the colors in the back ground blurred. This was taken in Sydney 2 days before we left. There was a local market that we thought we would walk through and see what we could see. I had visions of bringing things home but that did not work out. So we ended on one of those Richard walks through the Rocks and up to the Lord Nelson Hotel and then made our way back to the hotel. This was a great day, as my childhood friend, who was now living in Brisbane came through with a friend to Sydney, and after a few beers back at the market area we headed by ferry out to Watson’s Bay to meet my cousin and his wife for the first time.

So those were my attempts at the Adamski Effect. Not perfect but I enjoyed trying to get the effect. I really hope that you will be challenged to try it as well.

Here are a few links that you can check out when trying:

https://photographychef.com/how-to-get-the-adamski-effect-in-photoshop-step-by-step/

I used this one a fair bit.

and this one as well.

This is a circle blog and as I mentioned, we have some very talented artists in the group. I hope that they are all challenged to do my (Adamski Effect) challenge. Take some time to follow the links and see what they have for you this month. My incredibly talented friend Janet of @wiredtothemoon_ is up next. I can’t wait to see what she has to share. You can see more of her work by clicking on her IG page. Definitely check out her incredible art.

Look out for more blogs.

Stay well

You can also find me on Facebook, and Instagram.