Cape Cod Canal Railroad Bridge
On a recent Sunday morning the weather was looking pretty bleak – dark skies, torrential rain, and driving winds. My plans for shooting were looking pretty shot! However, as the day progressed the rain stopped and the wind died down. The sky was still gray and ominous, but that is when things can get interesting.
While driving down Route 6 towards Cape Cod, Massachusetts I saw the Cape Cod Canal Railroad Bridge off in the distance, reaching up into this amazing, dramatic sky. It was breathtaking, and I knew I had to make an image of this beautiful scene. As I drove around trying to find a place to park and setup, my mind was already running through a list of goals for the shot.
The image that I wanted to make needed to convey the two things that struck me when I first glimpsed this behemoth off in the distance. The first goal was to really capture the massive size of the structure, and how it really reached up into the clouds. The second thing that I wanted to do was capture the the moody, ominous sky.
To emphasize the scale of the bridge I selected my Sigma 10-20mm lens and mounted it on my camera. I started walking around looking through the viewfinder to try and find a composition that matched my vision. I liked the way the green strip of grass led my eye to the base of the bridge, then over the bridge and down the other side. Following the reflection in the water brings my eye back to the starting point. I like that. Once I found my location I set up my tripod to give me a nice solid shooting platform.
In the back of my mind I was thinking that this would be a great scene to try as an HDR image. I felt it would give me the dramatic, brooding sky, and show all the detail in the bridge. After taking a few shots and checking my histogram I settled on a base exposure of 1/80 of a second for my shutter speed, f/16 for an aperture and an ISO of 100. I underexposed the next took shots by one full stop each (1/160 and 1/320 of a second respectively) to capture details in the highlights, and then I overexposed the next took shots by one full stop each (1/40 and 1/30 of a second respectively) to capture details in the shadows.
Once home I used HDR software from Photomatix to create one image from the 5 exposures. I then brought this image in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom for some lens corrections, color management and basic sharpening.
I hope you enjoy viewing this photograph as much as I enjoyed creating it!