This image of the Sydney Opera House - where I work as a tour guide - was taken during the Vivid festival of 2016 and with it I became the first Australian to become a finalist in - Wiki Loves Monuments Picture of the Year 2017.

The Sydney Vivid Festival began in 2009 as a smart light festival and would become the biggest Festival of Lights, music and ideas in the world. I started to get interested in long exposure photography in 2014 after watching a youtube tutorial about it and I was hooked. My first experiments took place in Botany Bay just south of Sydney, I loved the way that the lights from the seaport at Port Botany were ablaze each night and when the water was calm there would be spectacular reflections.

Vivid Sydney is a winter festival that occurs during the three weeks from late May to mid June and each year it has become a kind of pilgrimage for me to go out over several nights to try and get some interesting pictures, the other nights I would take my family to join the millions of other people that were also exploring it. It truly is a marvellous festival with light sculptures all around the city, projections of art, stories and intricate patterns on buildings, spectacular laser beams emanating from the Harbour Bridge and from other buildings around the foreshores - all enjoyed by people from all over the world. At first I went to the most obvious place to capture photos of the Sydney Opera House - the overseas passenger terminal on the opposite side of Sydney Cove giving a classic profile shot - like this one I took during Vivid 2014.

This is still one of my favourite projections on the Opera House sails showing the Spherical Solution design of the famous architect Jorn Utzon.

In the chill of the Winter night I joined hundreds of other photographers, each of us jockeying for position and after a while I wandered up onto the Sydney Harbour Bridge to get a different angle, these angles were really interesting and I was surprised that there were so few photographers up there. It was higher up so instead of having the dark sky as a background I had all the lights of the eastern suburbs of Sydney giving what I thought was a spectacular backdrop and I was able to get shots like this.

This was taken during Vivid 2016 which was also a celebration of our indigenous culture, from this higher elevation the lights from the Eastern suburbs of Sydney make a lovely backdrop.

After taking scores of shots it was getting late and I was ready to go home but I turned back to look at the Opera House one more time and I noticed that all the light projections were switched off for the night at 11:30pm and replaced with simple white lights. The sails were brightly lit and since there were still parties and events going on inside all the internal lights were on as well - normally they are off at this hour. Incandescent sails and ablaze from within, I couldn't resist the temptation to get a long exposure.

The best angle was from the middle of the bridge, unfortunately this was also the wobbliest part since cars, trucks and trains were constantly speeding along the roadway. For long exposure photography the camera has to be absolutely still, the slightest vibrations would cause a blurry image. I had my Canon 760D camera on my tripod with a Canon 85mm f/1.8 lens, it has wifi and that is incredibly useful for long exposures. With the Canon app on my phone I could control the aperture, shutter speed and ISO without touching the camera.

But the vibrations from all the vehicles were still a problem, my settings to give me an optimal image were; 32 seconds shutter speed, f/11 aperture and ISO at 100. The 30 or so seconds was long enough to give me a smooth surface on the water but shot after shot was ruined by vibrations from vehicles, however I noticed that it was only the trucks and trains that caused picture ruining vibrations - cars didn't seem to transmit any noticeable effect.

So I stood there and took over 20 exposures until I finally managed to get a vibration free shoot - I got it just before the battery died!

In 2017 I found out about "Wiki Loves Monuments" - a global photographic project and competition that invites photographers from all over the world to submit images of iconic buildings and landmarks. I entered my image and was deeply honoured to become the first Australian ever to become a finalist in this global project. I contacted Jan Utzon - the son of the late architect of the Opera House, Jorn Utzon - to tell him. I had gotten to know Jan over the last 20 years on his visits to the Opera House and I always enjoyed his warmth and sense of humour. Jan wrote back and thanked me and also said that his father would have been most proud of the image. I was incredibly moved by his words.

Feel free to download a hi-res file by clicking here - it belongs to the world now.