The Humber Bridge

A sunny day in March and we headed off to the River Humber south bank, partly inspired by the lovely weather and partly by the fact that it was possibly the last outing with my trusty old Nikon. By then, after extensive research, I was pretty determined to swap my gear and downsize to a Fuji mirrorless system at the Camera Show at the NEC a few days later. It was an opportunity to handle the big beast one more time, lug the weight around on my back and convince myself I would be doing the right thing. Hopefully.

My first shots of the bridge date back to its construction in the 70’s and it has provided photographers with inspiration ever since.

One of my favourite shots of the bridge is from under the roadway. I’ve done it before with an iPhone but this time I had the right equipment. The extreme wide angle of the 14mm is perfect for accentuating the dramatic lines. The lighting was wonderful but also challenging – the dark shadows under the road contrasting with the bright sky.

That is where a Raw image capture with sufficient dynamic range allows for plenty of creative interpretations and these pictures are from the same , or very similar, shots but processed differently in my digital darkroom.

In this version I wanted to push the contrast to the limits, and bleach out the sky and the leave mid tones around the river.

On the other hand I couldn’t resist a landscape view that, with the shadow, almost created a perfect symmetry. The lighting and textures lent themselves to a black and white interpretation – yet I couldn’t resist this muted tonemapped colour shot either –

Above – a classic view – helped by a calm low tide and a wonderful sky – and below, as these were my final Nikon shots of the Humber Bridge I include my first shot taken with the Nikon D700 back in 2009 from Hessle Foreshore.  Hope you enjoyed them.