Sunshine Skyway Bridge

On Saturday, I participated in a joint meetup between my photography group and another fitness/adventure group. Not many people showed up for the event, but I had a great time and met some very nice people at the event.

Besides meeting new people, I also found two new places with interesting views of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Tierra Verde, FL. I have been looking for a place to get this angle for many years and never knew this place existed, although I've seen photos of this angle. Now I know where to get these photos. This angle shows the steep curve of the bridge.

For those that don't know about this bridge, this is the second bridge built to cross the water of Tampa Bay, connecting St Petersburg with Sarasota.

The original Sunshine Skyway Bridge was the site of a number of tragic events, including the collision of the US Coast Guard ship Blackthorn and outbound freighter Capricorn in 1980 which claimed 23 sailors' lives, and a structural collapse caused by a collision with the bridge support by the inbound freighter Summit Venture in 1980 which killed 35 people.

The Sunshine Skyway is a cabled main span approximately 5.5 miles in length with a vertical clearance of 199 ft. Construction began in 1982 and was dedicated in 1987 and cost $244 million dollars to build. It is constructed of steel and concrete. The Travel Channel rated the Sunshine Skyway #3 in its special on the "Top 10 Bridges" in the World. The bridge is considered the "flag bridge" of Florida.

Settings used for this image are exposed at 1/2000 at F7.1 at ISO 200 with +1/3 eV, at 208mm hand held. My White Balance was set to Cloudy, which rendered the image too blue. The image was color corrected with PhotoShop.