Bridge Barge
More photos from last Friday when the Johnson Street Bridge started to be removed. This barge holds a very large crane – it was positioned beneath the bridges (rail and road) with the crane on the stern, and this end, the bow, with a control room and various equipment. From the looks of this image, it would seem that splicing of wire rope is no longer practiced.
I like the top image, but what is missing from it is a person to give some idea of scale. The height from which these cables are hanging is about 18 feet (6m), a height that is not readily apparent in the photograph. In spite of this deficiency, I still like the photo better than the larger version it was cropped out of (below). The bottom image is presented to give some context to the crop – if you look carefully you can see a worker in one of the upper windows.
You can find my earlier posts about the bridge here.
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Canon EOS 5Dii, Canon 50mm/f1.4 lens, ISO640, f16, 1/25th (hand held so got lucky on this one)
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burnt embers 
Awesome shot! Wow, I am really sorry I missed seeing the barge in action, but I am eternally grateful that you were there with your camera my friend! Love these images, and as you mentioned, the first one is really epic!
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Well, there is the other span to come out in a couple of years. Maybe you will have a more forgiving schedule by then. Thanks for your comment, much appreciated.
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Super B&W image!!!
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Thanks David 🙂
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That’s a wonderful B&W image – you’ve really controlled those dark tones very well indeed. An excellent bit of work.
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Thanks so much, I appreciate hearing from you.
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I love them both. I really enjoy black n whites, but this one in color looks great.
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Hey thanks Obrien – I can tell from your blog that you enjoy b&w, and apparently I do as well. That red barge though, pretty hard to shout that kind of RED in monochrome.
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Just to get into the debate, I definitely prefer the second image. It is a nice composition (cropped image is certainly nice and clean) and tells more of a story. Also the colors work really well. Both, whole as well as cropped, are top photographs.
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Hi Joseph – thanks for you input. I see the attractions of the second image, and if I had not considered it pretty good, I would not have included it here. Right now I seem to be on a b&w jag (no reason that I can explain) so overall I go for the first image. The second one tells more of the bridge demolition story so from a photojournalism perspective is probably a better image. Fortunately, I am not a journalist 🙂 I have some bridge demolition images that are even further removed from the story that I like a lot, so you will be seeing them in the next few days as well.
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love them both 🙂
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Thanks maenamor!
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You are absolutely right, the cropped version is better, although the skyline is very nice, too. It is nice to see scale when it’s available, but the photo speaks for itself. I guess there is some public access to this location?
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Hi Ken – this is looking down from the sidewalk of the road bridge which has remained operational while all this was going on, except for an hour or so when the rail bridge span was lifted out.
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Wow! What a scale.
The images are beautiful. The first image is wonderfully composed. I like the bright red in the second image as well.
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Thanks Ryan. The crane is that red colour too. I don’t have a great picture of the crane, unfortunately.
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Don’t you hate that. I always see cool things to shoot but can’t manage to capture them all.
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Yeah, I wish had more time. But, you know, I found things to shoot that were behind all the people with cameras, and I like that. I think it is quite often that people are pointing their lenses in the opposite direction to an interesting subject (me included).
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Too true. Like you, I prefer the path less traveled (or in this case, seen).
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