Retrospective: Brisbane City Purple Hour - Understanding the moment
Let Us Talk about cityscapes! When there is a nice sunset, but you cannot make it out to the beach, what do you do? Go outside, find a few buildings and click that shutter. I am a huge fan of street photography and would find myself in the middle of Brisbane CBD as the sun was going down. It would be a mad rush to find a solid spot to capture the sunset as best as possible, but I could always find something cool. Today I will talk about one of my favourite photos I have taken of Brisbane to date. It is a photo that my mum also loves and requested me to print and frame it for her wall, so it is extra special. Now it is time to talk about Brisbane City Purple Hour Sunset (I have been working on naming my art better, I promise.)
This shot was a total accident. I had begun the day early, like 10am and was just walking around the city. I had planned to meet some friends later in the day but wanted to work on some street photography beforehand. Around 5pm I decided to head to kangaroo point in anticipation of a good sunset, the cloud cover was good, and I suspected that the sun would work its magic. I set up and waited. I waited, and I waited. Nothing was happening! I had waited about 30mins, moved to a various locations and was about to pack up my gear when the first colour started to come through.
Another photo taken prior to the sky going purple
The sunset started and began to create this wild pink hue behind all the buildings and a contrasting blue on the other side of frame. These photos were turning out really cool and I was feeling satisfied. I was enjoying the shooting process as every click produced a slightly altered image. Suddenly the sky got dark, but not black, a lighter navy blue. This blended with the pink streaky clouds turning the entire sky purple. This is something I had never seen before and have not really seen since. The Brisbane City skyline is one of my favourites, I find it to be so beautifully lit, and in combination with this wild sunset, it made for the best photo.
My biggest issue with this image is the lack of detail in some of the buildings. There is a lot of work and practice involved in getting the perfect exposure in an image. Balancing the highlight and shadows can be hard, sometimes even impossible. In this photo I had to sacrifice the clarity of the buildings a little to preserve the colour and tones of my clouds. In the past having an image that was not technically proficient was a big no no for me, they would be deleted ASAP. I have since started to enjoy a photo that is more on the grungy side and have learned to accept that sometimes the subject or story behind a photo is more important than if the shutter speed were just right to capture an image.
