Bridge vs. DSLR

Write Up

Here’s my blog entry  about my journey to an April photograph related to the “Bridge” category.

After thinking about the task at hand and not wanting to submit a photo of the English bridge as I would have done previously. I figured I wanted to go a bit off kilter and upload a strange photo.

Read Up

A quick search in the dictionary produced nautical, card games, musical instruments, noses, teeth, electronic circuits, snooker, computer networks and theatre themed ideas.

Bearing this in mind I started looking around. I’ve just bought a guitar of a guy at work, it’s a Fender Stratocaster Plus (USA 1993) in Lipstick red and it looks awesome. There’s one idea.

I’d also scoped out a railway bridge in Battlefield area by the 1403 visitor centre and thought I might try a night sot over there.

There was also a Shropshire bridge  club in Cross Houses and I thought about contacting them to ask if I could take some photos of the participants concentrating on their card games. I’d even considered telling  a porky and saying I was working as a freelance for Saga. As it happens I didn’t go down this route. I felt worried for my safety as I’d probably be mobbed by all the old dears offering glamour poses, I didn’t want that….again.

Strung up

Guitar first then. I placed my new instrument carefully on my desk (at home) on a black cloth and had a table lamp providing just enough light so as not to burn out the highlights.

After playing with the angle of the guitar to focus on the bridge only, I found this to be the best looking aspect.

I had my Sigma 10-20mm at 20mm and this photo was 1/8 sec at f5.6. The ISO was at 800 to get the balance right. The original was then altered slightly in lightroom to desaturate the colours a little more than they already were.

If I’d used my 50mm prime at f1.8 I would have had a better focus on the bridge and the pickups and knobs would have been blurred or bokeh’d out a bit. But I couldn’t get a decent field of view of the whole scratchplate.

Pin Up

While playing around getting ready for this little photo session, I’d started making a pin-hole camera from my camera’s body cap. This is the cap that you put into the camera to protect the sensor and mirror etc when you’ve removed a lens.

I followed this tutorial to help me and started playing. The following photo is a 27 sec exposure with no light apart from a small led torch being used to light up the guitar. The ISO was set at 800 still but there is no aperture measurement as I’d poked a pin through a piece of metal.

As you can see, the hole was a little on the large side and this caused it to be  a bit blurry. I did like this picture though, purely on it’s technical merit and nearly uploaded it. Thinking back though to my HDR collection of letters from shops in town, I remembered that other people just see an image and not the technical effort that goes into it. I chose not to submit this one at that point but I figured I may still upload the other guitar photo.

Look Up

It was also around this time that I managed to get out to Knockin and in the vain hope of getting a clear sky for some star trails walked across a muddy field into an area by this magnificent radio telescope.

Far from clear sky it was snowing. I took a few pictures with the light pollution from Oswestry in the background silhouetting the dish and then started doing long exposures with a mag light painting the dish so that it’d show up in the picture along with it’s reflection in the foreground water. I liked one of the silhouette but the illuminated one showed the dish as a focus point and for this reason I called it “Space Bridge” as it’s a bridge of communication between the Earth and the solar system.

Thinking back to how some people choose their scoring based on the adherence to the brief I thought this “bridge” might be stretching it a bit so I chose to not submit this one either.

Light Up

It was after this that I went out on a Sunday night to Battlefield 1403 to do some light painting under the railway bridge. I’d taken some coloured lenses that you’d typically have on disco spotlights to use with the flash. I set the camera up, remote released the shutter and flashed the underside of the bridge with a couple of different colours and then did an orb using my light painting kit.

After a train went past I thought about getting a train in the photo to complete the effect  It was around 9:30 when I chose to wait for the next train, it started raining so I covered my camera with my hat and kept the remote release live ready for when it came. It was forty-bloody-five minutes later when the train came. I was soaked, the camera was damp and I was cursing.

The shutter opened, the train whizzed past, I ran into the arch and did my whizzyness stuff with the lit up ping pong ball and multi coloured flash then returned to check the picture. I went home and dried off.

It wasn’t worth it.

Grow Up

The week afterwards saw more snow and a worried wife who was supposed to be driving to the LG Arena with our daughter to watch One Direction on their tour.
Being the greatest husband in the world I naturally volunteered to drive them to Birmingham LG so that the y needn’t worry about the driving conditions.

After dropping them off and not being able to buy a ticket from  tout for me I jumped aboard a sprinter from Birmingham Int’l to Birmingham New Street and went for a wander around the city centre.

Into the Bullring shopping centre I went and as I’m prone to, I was accosted by a security guard who asked me to stop photographing the building. There was a massive mirrored effect on the glass roof and I tried capturing a nice picture but now I had to cease and desist. The security guard told me it was because the shops were worried about copyright, which i thought was proper BS but I was on private property and respected the man’s wishes and had a chat about the issues.

Selfridge’s is now an iconic building in the centre of Brum with silver discs all over it like some sort of Doctor Who scenery, I thought I’d take some photos of it while I was around.

After falling over in the snow in front of a bus queue I found this bridge emerging from the front of the building. It reminded my of Plankton from Spongebob Squarepants for some reason.

Again though not a great image, not even easy to compose and my lens was getting wet snow on it.

First one more picture, a little more abstracty than the last then time to call it quits and head back to the station where I supped a half of Guinness in the Shakespeare before heading back to the Brum Int’l.

After considering all of my candidate pictures, I entered the “Strat Bridge” photo into the competition and did ok, I think it came 4th out of the eight entries in the category.

It was good to see a photo from the northern contingent in there too and also a cool mosaic made from lots of pictures of bridges in and around our hometown of Shrewsbury.

Shut Up

Time to go and get taking some photos for the “In Motion” category. I’ve just spent an hour outside with my camera pointed up at the Lyrids Meteor Shower. Saw a couple while setting the camera up then no more. Bloody typical. Nothing in motion there.
If you’re still with me, thanks and I hope you enjoy next months masterpiece!!!