Sydney’s Vivid Festival 2014

I had spent the two previous years having planned to attend this event, and then letting things fall through. In 2014, I decided to adopt the motto of the good people of Nike, and Just Do It! I booked myself onto a Qantas Airlines flight from Melbourne to Sydney and a hotel in North Sydney. I was up at 4:30am on Saturday morning to catch my flight. I drove to the airport, caught my flight, caught a cab to the hotel where I dropped my stuff, and then headed out. I took a break for an hour and a half to recharge my camera batteries, and recover from the morning, before heading out again for the evening. I eventually returned to my hotel room at 11:45pm. During the course of the day, I had taken 4,742 images, a filled small matter of 91GB in memory cards. Not a bad day’s work, if I say so myself.

The next morning, I had breakfast, before catching my flight back to Melbourne. I was back at my desk at 3:00pm, working on cataloguing all the images that I had photographed. 24 hours later, and I finally had my time-lapse film ready!

This short film does not contain all the footage I captured; it focusses primarily on the content from Vivid – a festival of lights around Circular Quay and Darling Harbour which last for two weeks in early Winter in this iconic Australian city. It’s a little like White Night in Melbourne – but spread out over a lot more time. The one mistake I had made was planning for only one night of photography. I should have allowed myself at least two. Here is an abbreviated version of the Vivid Festival from Sydney.