The Brooklyn Bridge is an iconic element of the New York landscape. It is easily recognizable with its historical roots and you cannot go wrong by including it in your composition. I have plenty of photos of the New York skyline with the presence of the famous arch. Every time I visit NY, I make sure to take at least a few shots of the bridge. On my last trip, I found the new bridge perspective for myself by shooting it from the Staten Island Ferry.
Loc: 40.706769, -73.997702
But what I realized years back was that it is not easy to come up with a meaningful composition while actually walking across the bridge. The first obstacle is the bridge wires. They are everywhere and when you want to compose the shot with part of the bridge as the foreground element and Manhattan as the backdrop, it is not easy to avoid them (wires). The second challenge is obviously people. They are everywhere and it can be ridiculous if you try to walk across the bridge in the middle of the summer during the high tourist season.
When composing this shot, I tried to deal with both of these problems differently. I managed to avoid tourists by shooting upwards. The second issue was solved by making the steel cables the main element of the shot. This formed the abstract symmetry of the composition.
And of course, without the flag, this photo would look too monochromatic and symmetrically boring.
Deconstructing Featured Photo
- Camera: Canon 60
- Lens: Sigma 17-70mm
- Focal Length: 70mm
- ISO: 100
- Aperture: F5.6
- Exposure Time: 1/500 sec
- Bracketing: single frame
- Tripod: hand-held
