This is a photo I made back in 2014, right at the time I decided I was going to travel more and concentrate on travel photography.
Looking for opportunities close to home, I found decent flights from Miami to New Orleans during Mardi Gras, and I didn’t think twice before booking it. I certainly had fun during that weekend, enjoying the typical architecture, impromptu street photography and people-watching.
But the photograph of this bridge was planned. You see, every time I go to a new place I try to find and prepare for a photograph that can be adopted as my hero image for the story or travelogue I’ll publish. Doing some research, I found this location across the Mississippi River from where the famed bridges could frame the skyline of New Orleans.
The Crescent City Connection, formerly called the Greater New Orleans, is not only an icon of the city but also the fifth-longest cantilever bridge in the world. It’s a twin design, and each of them carries four lanes across the river. With a good view of the city, the Mississippi River, potentially good reflections, and an iconic feature, the location naturally had all the elements I needed for my hero picture, and I decided to give it a go.
As I was staying in the French Quarter, to get to the shooting location, I crossed the river with the ferry to Algiers Point. I went fairly early so I could walk around and make some photos in that neighborhood too. Then I hiked the Mississippi River Trail until I reached past the bridges in time for sunset and blue hour.
Since I was there early, I had time to wander around and try different compositions and focal lengths until I settled in the on the image below. I composed the image with the horizon line in the lower third and the bridge coming into the frame as a diagonal from the close upper third. The diagonal line creates some tension, but it also allowed me to have the skyline of the city nicely framed. Needless to say, blue hour is my favorite time to be out there taking photos, so the colors, lights, and reflections from the city help to complete the image. The other creative decision was to go with a six-second exposure to smooth the water and create those reflections.
This photo was taken back when I first started to fall in love with Fuji. My kit back then was the Fujifilm X-E2 and the lens of choice the Fujinon XF 18-55mm F2.8-4 R LM OIS. Post processing was entirely done in Lightroom.
That’s all for now. If you’d like to buy a print of this photo, click here to access the different options.
