Causeway Memorial Bridge

Last Saturday, Frank and I took a few people from our Newbie group to Clearwater to photograph the Causeway Memorial Bridge. There's a whole lot of construction going on in the area and it was quite challenging to get a decent photograph without all the construction equipment ruining the shots.

Frank and I have photographed this bridge many times and every time, we try to come up with something a little different than the last time we shot it. I like the colors in this one.

Settings use for this image were: ISO 200 to eliminate noise, F16 for depth of field and to get the star bursts on the lights, the shutter speed was 2.5 seconds, which is 1 stop over to be sure to keep detail in the shadows. The camera was set in aperture priority mode, which I use about 95% of the time and partial metering off the underside of the bridge. The focal length was 25mm and the Picture Style was set to Landscape. Normally, I don't touch the Picture Styles at all. I prefer to leave it in the Neutral position, but as I said, I was looking for something a little different and the I think the Picture Style contributed a lot to the final image.

Causeway Memorial Bridge 3

This image was taken the same day as the other two I posted, except it was taken before dark when the sky was a pure white overcast. There was no interest in the sky and no interest in the photo. The original is pretty blah, if I say so myself.

While I was reading Rick Sammon's tweet on Twitter, he challenged everyone to create an illusion using a plug-in and post it on his facebook and his site. It's not a contest, just a challenge. Since I don't have many plug-ins and the ones I have I've never had occasion to use until today. I couldn't figure out how to use the one I just won. I'll have to spend some time with the tutorials from AutoFx.com to learn how to use it.

In the meantime, I had to do something, so I came up with this. I almost deleted the original, but something told me it would be perfect for fooling around in Photoshop and/or Lightroom so I loaded Dynamic HDR and ran the pseudo HDR twice on it. This is what I came up with. I think it looks a whole lot better than the original.

Here's the original:
What do you think?

Causeway Memorial Bridge 2

For some reason, I happen to be attracted to bridges. That's strange since I'm afraid of heights and water, you'd think I wouldn't go near them. Of course, my photos are usually made under them.

I like this second version of this bridge. It seems this is the first time I've ever had a successful shot when looking at a bridge from directly under it. It could be the wide-angle shot, I'm not sure why.

If they hadn't built that pier right next to the bridge I'd have never started to look for different angles. I'd have kept on making the same photos in different light. How boring! It could be that I just need to be challenged.

The settings used to make this shot are exactly the same as the photo I posted last night. The only difference is the time. This one was made at 9:38 pm; about an hour later. In case you missed them, these are the settings: shot in aperture priority mode for 1/4 sec at F7.1 using ISO 200 to minimize noise, with partial metering off the bridge at what looked like about 18% gray about 1/3 into the shot to maximize depth of field with my Canon 20D and an 18-55mm lens at 27mm.

Memorial Causeway Bridge

I've photographed this bridge many times, each time trying to do a better job with it. This is one of my favorite images shot last night during one of my teaching sessions.

It was shot fairly late and we had been waiting for a sunset that never happened, so we decided to wait a while longer to see if we'd get anything in the sky besides clouds. Even lightning would've been great after waiting so long.

Sunset was supposed to happen at 8:10 pm, but with the heavy cloud cover, we got nothing! No sun; actually, no sun all day which is unusual in Florida.

Last year, the City of Clearwater had planned to build slips along the beach just under this bridge. Everyone was disappointed because this is such a nice, quiet area. People from all over come by to sit on the benches and watch the sun set at this spot. Something must have changed the city's plans, because they built this fishing pier instead. While it does change the view quite a bit, we were trying to find an angle where we could work with it. I think this may be the best angle, but I'm not so sure. It's so close to the bridge, it's impossible to get the bridge by itself from this location. I don't think this is so bad; but we'll just have to work a little harder to get a nice view. I'll keep trying, though.

Techs are: shot at 8:18pm, in aperture priority mode for 1/4 sec at F7.1 using ISO 200 to minimize noise, with partial metering off the bridge at what looked like about 18% gray about 1/3 into the shot to maximize depth of field with my Canon 20D and an 18-55mm lens at 27mm.