 |
||
 |
|
|
The Squiggly Bridge
Much as I love landscapes, I also love many other types of photography and so it was good the other evening to go into town and photograph the so-called 'Squiggly Bridge', more properly called the Tradeston Bridge.
Spanning the River Clyde in the heart of the city, the Squiggly Bridge received it's name because of it's curious winding shape. It is notable not only for this but also for the structures which are placed along the length of the bridge. It seems that they serve no real purpose other than being a design feature - but they do provide a wonderful point of interest for the photographer.
Arriving at the bridge, there was a fantastic stormy sky, although the evening was quite balmy and dry. That sky provided some excellent detail for the eventual images.
The darkness of the storm clouds also meant there was little variation in luminosity between the sky and the ground - and because of this, I didn't need to use an ND-grad filter to balance out the exposure.
My immediate thought was to use the 10-stop filter to capture some movement in the sky - and also to "ghost out" the people crossing the bridge, which it did very well; although there were plenty of people crossing the bridge while I was photographing it, the long exposures ensured that not one of them can be seen in any of the images.
The real issue that evening was getting a half-decent composition. Beyond the bridge, there is a low but fairly messy skyline, which was a potential problem.
Also, capturing the bridge meant capturing vast swathes of tarmac, which is not renowned for it's photogenicity - that was especially so when using my wide angle lens.
The solution to both issues came in using the railings of the bridge as a lead-in to the structures on it, creating these as the focal point of the image.
All images and content are © A Sky Of Honey and may not be used, copied or reproduced without permission
Then, in post-processing, juducuous use of the burn tool successfully darkened down those areas of the images which I wanted to become less of a focus.
The use of the 10-stop ND filter provided great movement in the sky, although the exposure here was only 77 seconds. Because the storm clouds were moving swiftly, the images have the appearance of much longer exposures.
This is my favourite image of the bridge.