Inadequate Skylines

The cities of Chicago, Shanghai and Sydney all have two things in common for me. 

• Firstly, I have been to each of these places and witnessed truly magnificent skyline views at night. 
• Secondly, I have tried to catch each one of these night time views on my little compact digital camera (and failed miserably on each occasion)

I have come to the hard considered conclusion that the things I have seen will have to remain in my memory and not on my blog - and perhaps thats a good thing. It all too easy to spend your time when seeing something spectacular in the world, taking snaps rather than actually enjoying the event firsthand.

The most spectacular (purely because of scale and the complete absence of clouds) night skyline I have failed to capture on camera has to be Shanghai. Here is the best photo of a very poor bunch (I am sure that Kerry or Dan from AllThatComesWithIt who were there with their SLR can beat this one):

Here is one I took of another fantastically clear night in Chicago in 2006... actually that is a complete lie, my colleague Mike took it and I 'borrowed' the photo as my camera wasn't quite up to the job (or I didn't know how to work it properly). I really like the foreground on this one, and the fact it is a little imperfect:

The reason for all of this random gibbering, is that last night Lucy and I went to watch the New Years Eve fireworks celebration in Sydney at Cremorne point. And boy was it busy! We turned up at 9am, and the only place left to pitch our blanket and cool-box was on  45 degree slope in the full heat of the sun as people had been setting up camp for days beforehand. Throughout the day, the place got gradually more and more busy (at what we thought would be a quiet vantage point), a ferried kept shipping more and more people in. The queues for the toilets were 40 minutes long, and people were camped out everywhere. 

Anyway, to the point. After a long day of sunburn and JD and coke (we didn't have a bottle opener for the beer), the fireworks were absolutely spectacular, as was Sydney Harbour. It is really something you can only appreciate first hand, particularly the huge day-long build up and the busy atmosphere. Some of my best photos (of a poor bunch) are below (in their raw form at present - soon to be photoshopped), and they look good, but I couldn't even get any kind of an image of the Opera house and the bridge both of which were spectactularly lit up.