A long exposure captures the clouds moving over the lights of the city of Sydney. Also visible is a berthed cruise ship, just to the right of the Sydney Opera House.

Sydney Opera House and city

Cremorne Point, Sydney, New South Wales
Canon EOS 50D, 24-70mm f/2.8L @43mm, 25 sec, f/8, ISO100

I recently came across some eBooks by Edward Verosky, a professional photographer who likes to teach people how to make pictures. I bought a few of his eBooks, as DPS was offering them at a discounted price, and have been quite impressed by the content.

"Taking Your Portraiture to the Next Level" is a 62-page eBook that provides some background information about portraiture and lighting styles, then dives into various creative techniques for achieving different types of portraits.
In each section, Edward provides photos to demonstrate the style and results he is referring to in the text, and numerous lighting diagrams are also included, to show the location of the light(s) and camera in relation to the subject.

A number of pages are dedicated to a chapter titled "Developing Your Own Style", where the author talks about the importance of developing your own style to set yourself apart from the crowd, rather than churning out photos that look just like everyone else's portraits.

Last week I was in NSW, visiting various customer sites. I went north up to Muswellbrook, and south down to Nowra. It was a very busy week, so I didn't get much of an opportunity to get out with my camera. There were a few days of rain, which further reduced the photography opportunities.

However, I managed to get out to City Beach in Wollongong late one afternoon, and here's one of the photos I took while walking along the beach.

City Beach

City Beach, Wollongong, NSW
Canon EOS 50D, 10-22mm @10mm, 1/250 sec, f/10, ISO100

Having just come from a site, I felt very overdressed in a long-sleeved shirt, jeans, and steel-capped boots, as almost everyone else on the beach was in boardshorts or a bikini!

This photo was taken looking southwards, and in the distance, you can see the Port Kembla Steelworks on the horizon (click the image to view a larger version).

Taken by resting my camera on a convenient railing, this 1.6 second exposure was shot at Circular Quay one evening late last year, when I was in Sydney for a few weeks for work.

Sydney Opera House

Circular Quay, Sydney, New South Wales
Canon EOS 50D, 24-70mm f/2.8L @42mm, 1.6 sec, f/5, ISO250

While going through some photos taken last year in Sydney, I noticed that I had a few photos where I had managed to catch someone else's flash. Both photos were taken near the Sydney Opera House, looking towards Circular Key, overlooking the Opera Bar.

In this first photo, I was taking a photo of Circular Key, and managed to catch the flash of a lady who was taking a photo of her three seated friends.

first flash catch: crop of photo, showing the flash catch

first flash catch: photo straight out of the camera

About 5 minutes later, I managed to catch the flash from someone taking a photo of another group.