An Artsy Take
I am fortunate to have friends all over the world. Although I couldn’t meet up with three of these friends in Queensferry, Scotland, I knew this would be one of our stops on our trip.
Why? Because over the years I’ve seen photos my friends have taken of the Forth Bridge, Forth Road Bridge and Queensferry Crossing. The Forth Bridge (the red one) in particular has long been on my photography bucket list.
As soon as we parked, I hopped out of the car with my camera and my phone and took photos of the Forth Bridge. It wasn’t an ideal photo. There were trees in the way, and we were parked on a street with a bunch of other cars along the side. Did I care? Nope. I was like a little kid, so excited to finally see this bridge in person.
We stopped along the water’s edge and took a few more photos, but headed over to the office to see about the boat tour. Thankfully, we caught the last tour of the day. At first I took the ‘tourist’ photos. The bridges, the surroundings, sites on the shore, funny gnomes on Inchcolm Island (Inchgnome), and the what I call generic vacation photos.
Then I settled down and started SEEing the architecture and art in these amazing structures. I swapped out the 17–40mm lens for my favorite 100–400mm lens because I wanted to get the details. I wanted to search out the lines and shapes that were created in the individual bridges and in the interactions between the bridges.
Being on a boat tour, you don’t have any control over the views you are going to see. As we were constantly moving, the compositions were changing quickly. My head was on a swivel, stopping long enough to capture an interesting angle, then moving on along with our view.
Having researched and seen images of the bridges ahead of time, I already had some ideas in my head of what I wanted to photograph. That helped. Also, I thought about the return to shore and knew it might be better to get a shot on the way back.
Because we were fairly close at times, going directly under two of the bridges, I would switch back to my 17–40mm lens. That allowed me to get some unique angles from underneath.
While I was on the lookout for interesting bits and pieces of the bridges, I also made sure to put my camera down and take in the surroundings. When we set out on the tour, the sky was a beautiful blue with puffy clouds. The type of skies that make great backgrounds for images.
We watched rain clouds head our way, and as we headed back to the dock, it turned gray and started to sprinkle. Talk about two opposite opportunities for photographs.
As we walked along the shore on our way to the tour office, I stopped to watch the reflections of the Forth Bridge in the water. I’ve created quite a few images like this along the Chicago Riverwalk. Architecture reflected in the river. The colors of the buildings, like the color of the Forth Bridge, make some great abstract images.
If you get caught up in seeing and photographing the ‘tourist’ photos, you might miss something like this.
Of course, there is the architecturalness (is that a word?) of the bridges. That was where my photographic eye and brain automatically go. What can I frame that will create a fine art piece?
That sky! I couldn’t have asked for better drama to go with the bridges.
I was so thrilled to have the opportunity to see these bridges. I’ve been told by one of my local Edinburgh friends that the childlike excitement when you get the first glimpse never goes away. Hopefully, I will get to experience that again.
It is taking me quite a while to get through the images from our trip. I’m also trying to write stories that fit within the Full Frame guidelines. It’s easy to make these travel stories, and I don’t want to do that so I can share them here. Stay tuned.
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