The Sydney Vivid Festival is a great test of your low-light skills and your patience, not to mention a chance to capture Sydney at its most beautiful
So you’re planning to make the trip into town for the annual Vivid Festival, eh? Here are a few simple tricks to ensure your snaps of the occasion become the envy of your Facebook feed…
- Bring a tripod. Yes, it’s a pain in the backside, but do you want great pics or not? Vivid happens only once a year, and this is the one guaranteed way of getting clean, motion blur-free photos of the lights.
- Under-expose. Remember, the lights are super-bright against the darkness that inhabits most of the frame, so you want to under-expose the frame so that the details in the lights look even cleaner.
Don’t worry about exposing the people – expose the light correctly and the people will look after themselves. Also: if you forgot to bring a tripod, find a way to stabilise your arms, like my buddy Amos has in this photo.
- Leave the flash at home. Or just turn it off. If you really must get people in frame, let the natural light do its work.
Why bother bringing a flash when there’s already so much light to do the work for you?
- Don’t just capture the lights – capture the things around them to give it some context.
- Prepare a map of the best locations to shoot from and the route you’re going to walk.
- Be prepared to wait for your shot. The best locations are always swarming with people, but all you need is that split-second where the path is unexpectedly cleared and you can capture your moment.
Don’t just capture the lights – capture everything that’s happening around them, too!
For more tips, check out my workshop on taking better photos in low light.
