I made a visit to Sculpture By The Sea on the morning of 26 October 2017. I caught an early train to Bondi Junction, then walked down to Tamarama Beach, arriving just before sunrise. Getting up early was worth doing, it was a nice atmospheric sunrise with a big cloud bank adding some drama.
Photographing works of art – the sculptures is perhaps a bit like “meta-art” if you try and make your photos a bit artistic. At an event like this one, just about every visitor is wandering around with either a camera or a phone taking pictures. So it is challenge to try and record the artworks in a way that is a little bit different to a typical record shot photo.
So, I ended up walking from Tamarama, to the park in the middle, then to Bondi and all the way back quite a few times. Often I used a different lens to see the artworks in a different perspective.
One thing with arriving at dawn. The path is not too crowded. Not too many visitors except for a few other early morning photographers and the usual conglomeration of joggers.
And also, it is good to see a lot of the later visitors not so transfixed on the artworks that they missed the majesty of pods of passing whales –
Here are some of my photos –
After getting my still photos, I then concentrated on some video work. I did two things – walk along the path and around some of the artworks with a camera shooting video. The camera was mounted on a small gimbal to help stabilise things. Then, I started taking lots of stills in different locations to assemble into time lapse sequences. I have put the final output of all of this into a video on YouTube.
The movie concludes with some clever students (I think from Maroubra Bay Public) arranging themselves to form the word “Art” on one of he grassy banks above the path. I didn’t plan to film this and was lucky to be able to include it in the time lapse section of the video. Here is a still shot taken at the same time –
