5 tips from top photographers on how to capture Vivid Sydney

Harry Tucker
Photo: Colin Baker

Sydney’s annual light, music and art festival, Vivid, returns this week, with the lights turned on from Friday.

The festival now runs for 23 nights and attracts 1.7 million last year, making it bigger than the Sydney Festival and Sydney Royal Easter Show.

This year’s main attraction at the Sydney Opera House is a feature called Songlines, an animated canvas of Australian Indigenous contemporary paintings. It is the first Indigenous work commissioned for the sails of the Opera House and features six artists from different clans.

Of course, one of the best parts about going to Vivid is taking photos of the displays, so we got tips from some of Canon’s expert photographers about how to take great pictures while you check out the lights.

1. Pay close attention to your frame and focus on exactly what you want in the photo.

Photo: Greg Sullavan

2. Keeping the camera still is critical.

Photo: Colin Baker

Bring a tripod and cable release so you don’t move the camera when you press the shutter button.

3. Keep your ISO on low and narrow down aperture.

Photo: Colin Baker

This will minimise the amount of light entering your camera sensor so you can capture all the finer details of the lights on show.

4. Narrow down the aperture for a suitable depth of field.

Photo: Colin Baker

This way you can capture all the details in one frame. This is particularly fun when capturing lights, as it will help create the starburst effect on the lights! We recommended (f11-f22).

5. Experiment!

Photo: Jenn Cooper

Be creative and look for something different. A great way to do this is testing out a variety of shutter speeds to achieve different results.

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