Tuesday, October 19, 2010

You can go home again... on a ladder!

About 20 years ago, I took the above long exposure photo on (gasp) film!  It was from an overpass and gave a nice view of the highway going in and out of the city of Albany.  I always thought I could do better.  First off, I broke the rule of "thirds" by putting the skyline smack dab in the middle.  Secondly, the shot wasn't as sharp as I had hoped.  Even though I was on tripod, there must have been some wind or movement to cause the blur.  I had always planned on going back to that bridge, to try again.  Especially in these days of digital photography where you can take as many shots as you like and don't have to worry about using up film. 

Unfortunately, a few years after I took that original shot, the city erected this 8 foot tall fence...

The fence was much too tall for my tripod and the mesh was too small to shoot through.  Every once in awhile I would wonder if there was a way to get around that fence. After thinking about it for quite some time I recently came up with this...




I wrapped my monopod tightly around the ladder and was able to get just enough reach to shoot over the fence.  I wrapped an extra strap around myself and the camera and as I stood on the top rung, I rested the camera lens on the top of the fence to try to give it a little more support.  Even with that, whenever traffic crossed the overpass I was on, the bridge would shake a little, causing my long exposures to blur.  So I could only take the shots when there was no traffic on the overpass. The exposures were averaging about 20 seconds.  Long enough for the cars to travel the length of the curved road.


Now in that original shot, I felt that the white streak of the oncoming headlights was too much and that the red streaking taillights would have been better if you didn't see the the start of one of the trails.  Ideally, I wanted one lane of oncoming headlights and two lanes of the taillights.  This proved to be quite a challenge.  There were long stretches when there was no traffic at all.  These particular roads come from ramps that don't get that much action in the evening hours.  Also, my hands were getting a bit cold as the sun went down and my fingers were clutching the top of the fence for support.  At one point, a police officer stopped his cruiser and wanted to make sure I wasn't a jumper!  Once I told him what I was doing, he wished me luck and drove off.  And as luck would have it, I never got the exact shot I needed when there was no traffic shaking me and my camera around.  What I did get was a shot of the two lanes of taillights and three minutes later, another shot of the oncoming headlights.  Then, in Photoshop, I was able to combine the two shots into one...

 There was also some cleaning up to do.  I had to get rid of that crane that had been marring the skyline for about a year now. And because of the double exposure, there were some stars that were repeating their pattern because of their movement across the sky.  And later (after some suggestions on the RixFotos Facebook page), I also got rid of the sign.


After taking much care to get a level shot, I decided to tilt the whole thing to make it a little more dynamic. And I came up with 3 different variations. Here are the alternates...
By a small margin, the folks on Facebook, liked this full color one the best...
What I find interesting are the changes over 20 years. At one point, those little reflector signs from the original photo had been removed.  You can also see grass growing through the cracks in the pavement on the side of the road.  And finally, the dark trees hugging the curve now obstruct the highway a lot more than they did in the original shot.  Well, after much long windedness, that's about it.  All in all, I'm pretty happy with the new shot (all three of them)! 

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