Bridges by The Blonde

Living as close to the Thames as I do I had a large number of bridges to choose from, but I always had this one in mind, which is across part of the flood reduction stream of the Thames near where I live in Datchet / Eton. It leads to the Eton College playing fields, which as well as being the school playing fields, is also open to the public and is a really peaceful place for a walk or a run. I knew I wanted some interesting light for this shot, and we had been suffering from weeks of grey overcast days and rain here in the UK, so when we finally had a break in the clouds and some blue skies, I waited with bated breathe for it to hold out until sunset and then at 8pm leapt into the car to the bridge. Sunset is one of the trickiest subjects to get the exposure right on, and I found the camera's auto settings found it hard to balance the dark foreground with the light sky, so I used the manual exposure correction settings to compensate, and the beauty of digital photography is of course that I could see how far to go (as opposed to the old days of film where all you could do was "bracket" your exposure by several stops each side and waste alot of film in the process!) I found about two stops of under exposure gave me the depth of colour in the sky I wanted, the silhouette of the bridge and still a little colour in the grass in the foreground. The filmstrip shows some other shots in B&W, and the earlier shot just before the sun got lower in the sky, which I do like for it's blue tones, but for me the "winner" is when the sun sank a little lower and shot some golden rays across the water and gave a highlighted golden glow to the grass in the foreground. The water was beautifully still so I got an almost perfect reflection in the river also. All in all I'm really pleased with this one!