What a difference an hour makes…

Driving around Sydney this weekend around the golden hour Sonia and I stopped off at Cremorne Point to get some shots of the city skyline from across the river. Here is a couple of similar shots in terms of subject and composition, the only real difference being the 45 minutes (ok so an hour sounded better for the title of this post!) between them. The first shot captures the beautiful golden light against the buildings as the sun crouches low in the sky off to the right, the second was bout 15 minutes after sunset when the sky lights up with an almost surreal glow as the suns rays are filtered through the atmosphere to create the sometimes unpredictable tones. Incidentally, there is a pretty small window of opportunity when the lights come on in all the buildings and there is still enough sun to give the sky some nice colour.

Enough talk, here are the shots!

Sydney skyline @4.30pm

Sydney skyline @5.15pm

It just so happened that it was also the penultimate evening of the Vivid Festival, a month long celebration of the arts and of which a major feature is the “lighting of the sails” when every night between 6pm and 1am a display of light and poetry is projected onto the sails of the opera house.

Check out the gallery below to see the two photos from above in a larger format as well as a handful of shots of the Opera House in the lighting of the sails attraction.