Tag Archives: bridge

Cruising Out Under Lion’s Gate Bridge

Cruise ships are a regular feature of Vancouver Harbour. Pacific Place has a terminal where two ships can be berthed at any one time. One evening, as I was hanging out on Stanley Park, one of the ships set sail – presumably for a trip up to Alaska. I watched it pass close by where I was and took a look at what I could see happening on the decks facing the shore (including one chap in a bathrobe on a rear balcony who probably didn’t think he was visible. Then the ship headed out under the Lions Gate bridge as the sun was beginning to go down.

Nagoya Bridge

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When I headed south out of the center of Nagoya to go to the museum, my route took me down to the docks area. A highway along the water obviously needed to clear the route for the larger ships so a pretty impressive bridge had been constructed. It is called the Meiko-Chuo Bridge. I could only get a good view of it from the train but it was in the background when you were at the museum. I thought it looked pretty spectacular.

Wandering Over the Bridge at Deception Pass

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I have walked across the bridge at Deception Pass before and that appeared in the blog in this post. We headed back to the area one weekend recently and stopped to cross the bridge again. The narrow sidewalk on the edge of the bridge is ideal for someone with my lack of enthusiasm for heights. It also isn’t a good place to loiter to try and get shots because there are always people crossing and it is hard to squeeze by in some places.

However, you can get a really nice view of the pass itself and the bays alongside it. There is also a fair amount of wildlife that inhabits the area. We saw seals frolicking in the waters of the pass and a bald eagle flew by and perched in a tree top near the car. Some kayakers were enjoying the waters too. I actually could have done with a wider lens than I had but that was back in the car so 24mm was as wide as I could go.

Blue Bridge

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A new Johnson Street bridge has recently opened across part of Victoria Harbour. It has replaced an old bridge that was apparently in bad condition. The new structure is a bascule bridge to allow larger boat traffic to access the inner areas of the harbor and it has a really cool design. While the bridge carries the road across the water, it has excellent access on either side for other users. The two sides carry both bike and foot traffic and they are wide enough to provide plenty of space for all users. There was plenty of foot traffic when I was there which might have had something to do with the Christmas Parade that evening.

In the evening, the bridge is well illuminated. The curvy nature of the structure provides lots of interesting details. The mechanism for raising the bridge is not concealed either so you can see the gear wheels involved in lifting it if you look below. On my walk back one evening I ended up spending a fair bit of time on the bridge because it provided so many possible angles to shoot it either to get the full bridge or to focus in on individual parts of it.

Gorge Creek

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The North Cascades Highway crosses a bridge at Gorge Creek. We had stopped to go to a lookout point on the lake side of the highway and the trail to this point ran alongside the creek. As we headed back, I wanted to take a quick look from the bridge. I walked out a short distance and could see the creek below. I almost turned back at this point but, fortunately, I kept walking a bit further and suddenly a waterfall came into view. I could easily have missed it. Indeed, Nancy almost didn’t come out when I told her to come and have a look as she similarly thought she had seen all there was.

The falls were slightly tricky to photograph. The top section of the falls was the first to be seen as you walked out on to the bridge. The bottom section was obscured. As you walked out further, the bottom came in to view but the top started to become obscured. Getting the full scale of the falls in one shot is not really possible. While you are there, you appreciate it of course but it is not so easy to portray to someone remotely. With the shadow of the gorge as well, getting a shot meant dealing with a wide dynamic range. This would have been a good time to try a pano in HDR. The latest version of Lightroom has that functionality automated but it hadn’t come out when I was there and, to be honest, I couldn’t be bothered trying it!

The Bridge Over Deception Pass

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Before we knew we were moving to the Pacific Northwest, we took a vacation up here. Ironically, we did it because it was relatively close and we thought the next move might take us away. Guess we got that one wrong. On that trip we jumped between the islands a little and part of that involved driving up Whidbey Island and crossing Deception Pass. Consequently, this post exists which describes my brief exploration of the bridge as we were passing over it in weather that was a little less than great.

Our recent visit to the Deception Pass State Park allowed us to walk along the beach and up towards the bridge. This was a different perspective to the previous visit. The shoreline is quite long and, for a while the bridge does not look that impressive as you are seeing it from quite a distance. However, as you get closer and start to make out the traffic on the bridge, you get to appreciate how large it is and how high over the water.

Since it is actually two bridges, it lends itself to a panoramic format when you are looking from a distance. It is only as you get closer to the bridge that you can start to compress the whole thing into something that fits the normal frame a little better. This was the third leg of a day trip so I was beginning to get a little worn out so I didn’t go and explore all of the possible angles. I will definitely be back and will try that another time but, given that I still had to walk back to the car, I decided I would save that for another day and focus on the trip home.

Rusty Discoloration

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The Riverwalk along the Chicago River takes you under the bridges. Each bridge is on a cycle for refurbishment so, while they are repainted regularly, they do progressively show signs of weathering. Some of them are rather old structures with the iron and riveting being something of a period long gone. I stopped for a while to look at the different colors that the gentle corrosion created. Nothing too drastic but an interesting contrast with the original paint color.

Bridge Perspectives

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Walking under the bridges along the Riverwalk in Chicago provides a very different perspective that that which you get from above. Some of the bridges have solid deck and others have gridded metal decks which allow light through (and anything else someone might drop). The lattice structures under the deck are ornate yet grubby. They are obscured from most views and get covered in the grime that washes down from above. I am not making this sound very appealing but I find them very cool to look at. The noise of the traffic above is there but slightly isolated which adds to the atmosphere for me. They do put a curved stainless-steel cover over the walkway itself so you are not vulnerable to anything from above ending up on your head which is something I am grateful for.

I-90 Floating Bridge

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I-90 crosses Lake Washington on a floating bridge. I have driven over it countless times. It crosses from Seattle to Mercer Island which the freeway then crosses before continuing on to the east side. I was on that side of the plane when taking off from SeaTac and got a great view of the bridge. The dead straight floating section and the transition to land looked very interesting from above. The road actually goes through a tunnel on Mercer Island in a long curve which, when I imagined its path, only added to the geometry of the whole.

Trestle Out of Use

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The east side of Lake Washington used to have a lot more train traffic. A line ran up that side of the lake but the railroad closed it down and then the interstate was rebuilt and went over the previous right of way. In Bellevue, the tracks crossed a valley on a large trestle bridge, the Wilburton Trestle. This wooden structure was modified at some point to allow an expansion of the road that ran underneath it but, once the railroad was closed, it fell out of use.

For the longest time, I didn’t even notice it. While it is close to the interstate, it is off to one side at a time when you don’t have much time to look around. When I finally noticed it, I was amazed I had driven by so many times. Even then, I never got a chance to take pictures. I was hoping for better weather but winter has not really helped in that regard so, one afternoon, as I was heading back from Bellevue, I stopped off to check it out.

Wooden trestle structures are a curious thing and very typical of old American railroads. The dull light may not have helped emphasis the structure much but it does reduce the contrast you can get with something so sheltered underneath. Even so I used HDR a bit to help manage the exposure range. Supposedly, the future for the trestle will be as part of the expanding trail network for the eastside. It is suggested that it will reopen to trail users by 2020. I think I shall ride down to it at that point to check the view out. I imagine it is pretty good from up there.