I regularly avoid Vivid Sydney - one of the largest light festivals on earth. The idea of battling with a hundred thousand odd folk in a single night for a look at some lights doesn't leap out as the most appealing way to spend an evening. I'd rather stay home, flick the bathroom heat lamps on and off a few times, call it a light show and have an early night.
Creatively I am a landscape photographer. Alone in the wild is where I find peace and reprieve. My muse lives in the rustling of trees and alongside bubbling brooks. Cityscapes confuse me, there are too many straight lines and angles. My muse runs away in fear of the sharp edges and hard surfaces - she has a preference for diffused colour and soft edges.
This year I chose to push myself and follow the masses into the breach. After a horribly intense and long couple of weeks at work I forcibly put myself on the citybound train rather than the bus home to the safety and warmth of my duvet. Sans tripod, I packed my low light Sigma portrait lens thus accepting the challenge to make something so vast, large and occupied feel intimate. Besides, my wide angle cityscapes are never going to measure up to the real city photogs.
It turns out this was the perfect plan. This year's Vivid is filled with meditative displays. Combinations of music and light that harmonise to create a sense of space among the madness of the crowd. As I roam through the jostle I am constantly delighted to find that everything has dropped away as one installation after another invites me in with pause and peace.
I am contemplating this artistry when my friend Nicole (@elcoinate on instagram) realises she has forgotten her SD card and commandeers my camera with her crystal ball. I have always found crystal ball photography baffling. I don't understand why the view itself is not enough and most of the shots I've seen are cliched. The landscape made small and insignificant viewed through a ball plopped on the ground.
Nicole instructs me in the aperture settings (1.8 for the curious) and positions the ball just so while I yawn and wait to escape back into contemplating light and tibetan singing bowls. Eager to pretend I'm not in the city and am on the side of a mountain with a bunch of silent monks.
With the ball in position I manually focus in and realise that we can hold all of Vivid in our fingertips. Mesmerised by the idea that this spectacle of light can be contained in the delicate grip of one woman. It is the vast pulled into the intimate. Bokeh dances where the harbour bridge used to be as it is magically drawn into a tiny sphere in its entirety.
My muse wakes up and we start to see potential in every display for both a close-up personal experience and all of it drawn into a space she can manage.
It is a lesson in being open to challenging my creative safe ground and trying new things. I jumped on a ferry home with a lit imagination. And a certainty that while the experience was interesting and pushed me, I much prefer the trees and breeze.
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