Sunshine Skyway Bridge

Another view of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge taken from the North Pier Rest Area Park. This bridge always has fascinated me and it has only been recently that it doesn't scare me to drive over it. I used to be so afraid of this bridge. It doesn't seem that bad now.

I like the way this shot of the bridge is framed by the tree and the gravel near the shoreline, although it seems very far away. This is the effect one gets when using a the shortest end of my zoom. It makes things appear further away than they actually are. In doing that, it creates depth in a photo, as does the framing in the foreground. By framing both the top of the frame and the bottom, it creates balance.

This image was shot using my 55-250mm lens at 55mm. With the Canon crop factor, that would be 88mm or a moderate telephoto. The framing makes it appear further away. It was shot at 1/6000 @ 7.1 and 400 ISO in Aperture Priority mode. I used partial metering and metered off the sky.

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.