A Sunday morning started out looking pretty rough — dark skies, driving rain, heavy wind. As the day went on the rain stopped and the wind died down, but the sky stayed gray and ominous. That’s often when things get interesting.
Driving Route 6 toward Cape Cod, I spotted the Cape Cod Canal Railroad Bridge off in the distance, reaching up into that dramatic sky. I knew I had to stop. I wanted the shot to do two things: capture the sheer scale of the structure, and hold onto that moody, brooding sky.
I switched to my Sigma 10-20mm to emphasize scale, and walked the area looking for a composition that worked — I liked how the strip of grass led the eye to the base of the bridge, across it, and back down through the reflection in the water. Once I found the spot, I set the tripod and got to work.
I shot this one for HDR — 5 exposures bracketed a stop apart around a base of 1/80th at f/16, ISO 100 — and merged them in Photomatix, then finished it up in Lightroom with lens corrections and basic sharpening.