And SOH, the Sydney Opera House, was even further away, although I did not know it would be at the time.
If you recall, I photographed and put together a sepia collage of the Sydney Harbour Bridge from an unusual angle, and when it was finished it had a virtually square format of 55 cm x 56 cm. It seemed logical to make a collage of Sydney's other world-renowned icon, the Sydney Opera House, to hang next to it. But both the SHB and the SOH are very linear. How was I to get the SOH attractively into a 55 x 56 "square"?
My first thought was to take a lot of photos from the Manly Ferry. This was more difficult than I first thought. I had to take a lot of shots of the SOH within the Sydney Skyline, from a reasonably fast moving ferry in a matter of a very few seconds. There seemed to be promise, but the Opera House was too small even using my telephoto to its limit.
The stitching of the panorama was not terribly successful, with the verticals being particularly bad in the first attempt.
Gradually the SOH got bigger, and I got more excited. The SOH was still much too small, I was still on a moving ship, but a square photo of the Opera House seemed more and more feasible.
By now, I was thinking that my job was almost done. But as the ferry got closer to the SOH, I found it impossible to take enough pictures in literally about two seconds, and then we sailed past with the structure larger than my wide angle lens could cope with, and the movement of the ferry made it impossible to photograph anyway. An Opera House with motion blur is not a good look.
I needed to reconnoitre to find the optimum land based view which would give me a square format of a linear Opera House. I tried several places, all of which had their disadvantages.
I first went to Dawes Point, almost underneath the SHB, but the SOH was much too linear. Either I had to have much too much water and sky, or else I had to chop off part of the SOH!
It was almost alright, but you can see clearly, the format is not square. I retraced my steps back towards Circular Quay, and obtained a recognisable view, but again, the format was not square.
I got home to find that my colour balance had inadvertently been turned green, and I have left these snaps in this delightful bathroom turquoise. Why should I be the only one to suffer? It's an easy enough problem to correct for.
I was a little bit closer, but of course, I had not taken a vital photograph of plain sky, so that on cropping, I had to fill in (quite literally) with some very crude, primitive Photoshop skills. Again, though, the format was landscape rather than square.
Correcting for the green cast made me think. The SHB was done in a very suitable sepia tone. Sepia wouldn't do for an icon of the 1970s, so should it be in colour or black and white? Below you can see what it looks like in black and white. It looks quite attractive, but that was for when I got home. In the meantime I threw my green cast over two more possible view points.
This is the SOH taken from Farm Cove overlooking Man o' War Steps. It has the advantage of the SHB in the background, but once again the format is far from square, although I felt that this was getting better. I was definitely making progress.
I had found the format I wanted. There was not too much sky and even less water. But photographing the SOH from this angle is rather like taking a picture of a cow using the tail as the main feature. This would not do!
Then I had my "Road to Damascus" moment. If this was the right format, then I could take a picture of the "cow" from the head end (and believe me when I say that SOH was by now not standing for Sydney Opera House, but something much worse). Directly across the Harbour is Kirribili House, the Sydney home of the Australian Prime Minister. Something told me that I would not be allowed to take photographs in the gardens, and this was confirmed by the Security Guard on the gate. But very close by I found a concrete wharf, Beulah Street wharf, to be precise!
This view could be cropped square, the city skyline lay behind it like a theatre backcloth. It was perfect. My collage would be the SOH from Beulah Street Wharf, and so it has proved to be.
Of course, the weather was not always fine, my telephoto moved when it shouldn't so that the bits didn't fit together. On two occasions I left out photos so that I had holes where I should have had part of a building.
Then there was the time I went down to the concrete wharf at night. The Opera House looked beautiful. This was how I was going to depict the SOH. Unfortunately Beulah Street has a FLOATING concrete wharf, so that my night shots adopted a surreal look about them, thanks to the wash and movement caused by passing ferries.
These are two of the better snaps. By now I was beginning to get to know the fishermen by their first names, and STILL I hadn't got what I was looking and hoping for.
I took photographs on overcast days, and at 6 o'clock on a summer's morning
Always there has been some technical reason why a set of pictures wouldn't do. I'd take too many pictures so that it was small, or too many, so that it was too big. Even though I was using a tripod, occasionally I would get an out of focus shot or a wrongly exposed pic.
This is my most successful collage to date. But I had to fudge the sky, and I did it crudely, so it isn't up to framing standard. But one day, it will all fit into place, and I will get a frameable collage. I shall be the man who took a picture of the SOH and who, so far, has taken three years to get as far as he has. Another couple of years, and who knows?
