I visited the General Sullivan Bridge at the end of August to try to catch the Blue Supermoon. My intent was to show the scale of the huge moon next to our big 1930-era rotting bridge for a sense of scale. Those images didn’t work out, but I enjoyed the last few minutes of the sunset so much that I resolved to return over Labor Day weekend. I arrived before sunset so I could enjoy the whole thing.
I’ve grown up with this bridge as it connects Portsmouth to the Rochester / Dover area where I’ve lived all my life. I used to pass this bridge daily on my way to work, I’ve taken photos on it as a pedestrian, and I swear I have memories driving across it even though it closed to auto traffic the year I was born. The state has recently decided to put it up for sale, so there’s a chance it won’t be there long.
Anyway, enough with the nostalgia and onto the photos. As I said, I arrived before sunset to get set up. There’s a little park next to it and there was plenty of parking and space for me to set up. I brought a tripod and remote release to take longer exposures as the light faded. I took all the shots with my Nikon Z 24 – 120mm lens on my Z8. All of these, except for one, are at ISO 64 to take advantage of the Z8’s dynamic range. I’m very pleased with these images: the 24 – 120 is very sharp and the 45 MP images capture lots of detail.
This was a great opportunity to really feel the advantages of a mirrorless camera. The articulating back screen made composition and focus easy while using a tripod and the ability to zoom was helpful as the light faded. I could do this with my DSLRs, but the fact that focus is near-instant on my Z8 is a game changer. The exposure preview provided a good approximation of what my final images would look like, even for multi-second exposures.
The live histogram on the screen allowed me to experiment with exposing-to-the-right (ETTR). This technique deliberately overexposes the image without blowing out highlights so it can be underexposed in post. This theoretically reduces noise in the shadows since they are better exposed and bringing them down can hide noise instead of adding it. I took images with both ETTR and regular exposures and didn’t see any real difference in this case. I did use ETTR to allow for longer shutter speeds to blur the water a bit. That worked well.
I took shots from various angles and cropped most of them in a wide ratio to emphasize the length of the bridge. The sunset lasted about 30 minutes until the golden light abruptly disappeared. I turned around to find a beautiful sunset over a nearby dock, creating an almost tropical feel. I stayed through the sunset and grabbed one last image at the beginning of blue hour.
I’m really happy with these images and I plan to go back this fall and capture some of the leaves. I want to get everything I can before the bridge is potentially demolished or taken away.
Relatively Ambitious 