With Conor taking french horn lessons three nights a week I've developed a new-found ambition of making photos while waiting for him. After dropping him off I've been driving around seeing things. It's quite dark in the evenings and the sky's been inky black and most of the stuff I look at isn't all that interesting because of the super harsh shadows. I have a suspicion that with the changes that the city has made moving towards LED based street lights that there's way less ambient light floating around and everything just feels darker.. or maybe I'm just old and my eyes are starting to go.
During my short photo stints, I usually head downtown to find something to make a photo of.. time passes quickly and oftentimes I'm rushing back to MRU, driving up Bow trail to get to 37th street. During that drive I've noticed this bridge and I've noticed how the light caresses it and I noticed that it might be an interesting subject that I wanted to shoot. Today would be my attempt to go there.. I had it all planned out in my head.
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| Sexy reds |
When speeding out of downtown (erm.. speeding, but within the posted speed limits for sure) I only catch a glimpse of the light on the bridge and based on that I felt the best place to shoot it would be from the same side, a little ways back, with maybe the 70-200 zoom. So after parking the car in an alleyway near by; this is where I headed to.
As it turned out, that spot sucked! There were poles in the way, the view wasn't quite what I envisioned and the angle was all wrong. I've noticed that sometimes I'll see something out the window of the car and think "Gee, that'd make an awesome photo" but, more often than not, when I stop, get out and look, it's not quite what I thought it would be. Moving past a scene must cause my brain to add some magic dimensions the views.
As I looked for another idea I noticed the shadows on the ground and thought "Hey!, that might work". Placing the big light behind the bridge beams for backlight and including the ground shadows I took the shot. I love the sexy red tones.
As I kept looking around I found this scene - which closely matches the view that made me come here in the first place! It's just the other side of the bridge! It had the same light fall off I was looking for with some *bonus* lines coming up from the bottom right. The light pole anchors the right side of the frame and keeps your eyes from leaving the image.
This is what I was looking for! So I got to work, as I was shooting a train flew past and left some light streaks and there's even a slight brightness in the sky from some clouds, Perfect! I had already known that I'd be making this monochromatic photo and am pretty happy with how this turned out.
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| Arch |
I didn't have much time left before having to go get Conor but as I walked back to my car I made a couple more shots from the bridge deck. Again looking for light fading into the inky sky. I felt a little bit like this is the kind of shot you'd make if you were on a bridge.. I was going for a bit of symmetry here but it's broken by the shadows, puddles and the lone street light poking out like a 'war of the worlds' alien space ship. Again monochromatic. This wasn't my favorite, but it's growing on me.
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| War of the worlds |
While positioned on the bridge and looking for compositions, a couple pedestrians walked by, I couldn't help but to press the shutter. Exposure was 2.5s so there's motion blur, but the yellow and the forms add to this otherwise basic scene.
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| Date Night |
EEK, I had to go! I quickly packed up and drove to MRU to get Conor. I got there just in time to meet the clock deadline but he was 15 minutes late coming out of his lesson. I didn't mind because I was excited for the photo that I'd captured and felt like I'd been productive.
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Oh hey, if you happen across this post and got this far, please feel free to leave a comment below. I'd love to hear from you. Thanks for looking.
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