I woke up today expecting to take a morning trek up into Northern Baltimore County in the snow for some nice "snow on trees" types of shots. But when I got up instead of the 1-2" we should have had at that point we had about 1/4". I looked at the weather, realized they changed the forecast taking away most of our snow so I went back to bed.
After I had been up for a while I noticed the sun was breaking through the clouds and there was actually some blue skies mixed in among the clouds. Quickly I shifted gears realizing the potential for a good sunset. I have no idea why but I immediately thought of this bridge. I didn't even know what way it faced, I had photographed it during the daytime the previous winter with a flock of Canadian Geese in front of it but thats about it. Weird thing is I even figured I would be heading back into the cove behind the bridge. I guess I was taking mental notes that day last winter when I had shot the bridge during the day. I got a later start than I had wanted so I ended up watching the infancy of the sunset while still in route. I got a little impatient and got going a little fast on the road that surrounds Prettyboy Reservoir. Despite the slightly slippery roads I arrived at the bridge in one piece.
I decided I needed to be at a low angle in order to get a good angle to get the bridge and sky in the same frame. This meant climbing down a snow covered hill about 25 feet to the waters edge. I let Sparky off his leash and sent him down the hill first. He has four paw drive, he always makes it everywhere safely. I have two feet and I didn't make it down without incident. I made it about 15 feet down when I slipped down about another 10 feet on my butt. If it wasn't cold before, it sure was cold now! No time to worry about that now, light was approaching peak! I set up my camera on the tripod (made of metal and also very cold by this point) and set up with the appropriate lens. After getting a few run of the mill shots (Spook Hill Road Bridge #2, #2 actually came first but was edited second...) I began to play.
For this shot I wanted as long of an exposure as possible because I saw the clouds were moving across the sky at a pretty good clip. I closed my aperture down to f/22 and lowered my ISO to Nikon's fake 100 (Lo1.0) and put on two neutral density filters and a circular polarizer. I was able to take my shutter speed from 1/4 second on Spook Hill #2 down to 6 seconds on this image. This allowed me to keep the shutter open for long enough to have the clouds "paint" themselves across the frame while not allowing anything to blow out and turn white. After some careful post processing I brought the foreground levels back up so you could see the bridge and ice covered reservoir.
Now in the twilight I put all my gear away, turned around and realized just to my left was a much easier way to get up to the road that didn't involve a 75 degree hill. When I see a photo opportunity I get so focused I often miss the obvious. That can be a real hindrance to not only taking the easy way to a location but to getting the shot to begin with. If you lock yourself into one image you often miss the obvious image which is even stronger.
