Taking Photos of Sydney
Getting the Best Sydney Pictures

Love photography? Everything you need to take the best photos of Sydney Australia. Local knowledge, free guides, workshops and more.

Sydney Night Digital Photography

Throughout this Sydney Closeup site there are pointers to where to go for a great koala picture or photos of an Australian water dragon.

Or maybe you want hard-to-get platypus pictures or you're interested in old cemetery locations.

Sydney Pictures - Free Photo Guides

Free Photo Guides include macro, landscape and night digital photography

Detailed photo guides, written by photographers for photographers, are available for Sydney Australia.

They're free and they show you where to go to take the best Sydney pictures

Information about the best locations for macros, landscapes, night digital photography, buildings and structures and more.

Workshops & Classes, Digital Photography

Brent Pearson, the photographer who started, and now moderates, the Free Photo Guides for NSW, Australia, also runs periodic workshops on different aspects of photography in Sydney.

He's a talented photographer who's also incredibly generous with his knowledge. If you're serious about photography and post processing, have a look at Brent's blog. He includes tutorials, blow by blow accounts of how he's achieved his effects, and lots of before and after photos.

A Different Perspective on Sydney's Port Botany

Check out his blog for Seascape and HDR photography, night photography techniques and other digital photography classes and see what he has on offer when you're around. You're sure to come away with new sea or landscape photography techniques and some amazing photos of Sydney Australia.

Seascape Photography

You can stay right in Sydney or go further up or down the coast, there's no shortage of fantastic opportunities for seascape photography. Whether it's morning or sunset images or photography at night there's planty of scope.

Here's a photo of a sea cave with rain cloud, taken by Steve Passlow in the Munmorah State Conservation Area, just north of Sydney. Get the full impact of Steve's great HDR photography.

Seascape photography - or is it seascape art?    It's HDR Photography

Start with the Free Photo Guides and you'll invariably find more great photos of Sydney around the recommended areas.

Amazing Street Art

If your tastes run to urban art, grunge and graffiti there are plenty of places to find it in Sydney Australia.

May Lane in St Peters is well known for its amazing street art. This photo was taken by Sydney photographer Rachael Muller and you'll find a whole series on May Lane on her website.

Amazing street art, grunge and graffiti in Sydney Australia

For more photos of Sydney you can wander over the road to Sydney Park with its wonderful old chimney stacks, the remnants of what were once the largest brickpits in Australia. Eighteen to twenty brickyards operated in this space for over a hundred years, from the 1880s until the last ones were filled in and the park created in the 1980s.

Romantic Photos

What's your idea of romance? A deserted beach? Twinkling city lights coming on all around you as daylight fades to evening? An intimate restaurant with a table set for two?

We all have our fantasies. Photographing them is something else again. Here are five spots that could be real contenders, one of them might just meet your particular definition of romantic:

Great photography at night PLUS romantic dinner ideas

• Looking down on Sydney at dusk:
  
  Either of the two revolving restaurants in downtown Sydney
  
  Sydney Tower in Centrepoint or
  
  Summit Restaurant in Australia Square
  
  will give you panoramic pictures of Sydney as well as a meal. Book an early table to catch the sunset as well as the night lights.


• Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge across the water: Combine this with a ferry ride across the harbour. You will get this view coming into the city from pretty well any of the northern or eastern suburbs. Or take the shot from Mrs Macquarie's Chair in the Sydney Botanical Gardens.


• For a deserted beach you'll need to go slightly out of town. The Royal National Park in Sydney's south is a good bet.

  Take a train to Cronulla, then the small ferry to Bundeena in the national park. From there stroll to any one of a number of beautifully quiet or deserted beaches. Combine it with a cliff-top walk for more spectacular photos of Sydney, or shoot some of the old aboriginal rock art just off Jibbon beach.





Romantic evening ideas - sunset, water images, good food

• Romantic dinner for two by the water.

  There's lots of choice but it's hard to go past the Oyster Bar, 1 East Circular Quay for great pictures of Sydney.

  I've opted for this restaurant because it's a lovely historic building - built in 1908 as part of the wharf facilities - and for its location right on the water.

  There's nothing between you and the harbour but a railing.

  So the ferries will chuff past and the bridge is in your sights while you eat, drink and take great photos of Sydney harbour and Circular Quay.
  
  Another good option is Cafe Sydney at the top of Customs House, just back from Circular Quay and close to the modern art paintings of the MCA. It has a lovely outdoor terrace with great harbour views. Both places are open all day for coffee (or cocktails) if you don't want a full meal.



• Stay on your own island in the middle of Sydney Harbour.    Yes, you can.

  Cockatoo Island in Sydney Harbour is reachable by ferry and has camping or serviced apartment accommodation. Photograph the city spread out in front of you, the sunrise over Sydney Harbour Bridge, the sunset over the Parramatta River, and there are great old cranes and other leftover shipyard equipment to entice you to still more photos of Sydney.

  This location is particularly good for photos of Sydney's New Years Eve celebrations, and January vacations when the weather is at its best for camping and you'll have longer evenings for photography.