Crossing the Blue
This is the second shot from my blue hour shoot last week of Hammersmith Bridge in London crossing the Thames into Barnes. For me the bridge and river also symbolise a crossing from the leafy suburb of Richmond upon Thames and South West London into the more urban, grimy and busy inner city.
What grabs me about this image is the the interplay between the blue tones of the sky and river and the warm tones of the fading sun and lights from the bridge, for me it is a perfect metaphor for what we as photographers spend our time trying to achieve.
This is an HDR image composed of 5 RAW files taken at 1EV intervals between +1 EV and -3 EV. The RAW files were processed in Photomatix Pro and the tonemapped image exported into Photoshop for further tweaks.
Once in Photoshop I made a copy of the background layer and adjusted levels.
A quick tweak of saturation and colour temperature followed.
The image still felt a little flat so I burned the midtones on the water, this darkened the water and made the reflections POP.
A further tweak of levels followed to finish.
A Brief Moment in Time 
I really like this one, Chris, for the reason you mentioned – the mix of cool and warm. Great job.
Thanks Jennifer. There are times when I get home cold and wet, aching from carrying a bag of gear and look at a set of sometimes uninspiring images and wonder was it worth the effort.
Then there are times like this when you look at the images and know why you were there
🙂 I think that I might be about to have one of those mornings. 🙂 For me, it’s always worth it – even if I don’t manage to have any useful images, I know what to do (or not do) the next time.
Beautiful!
Thank you Karen, I’m glad you like it. I’m rather pleased with this latest set.
Lovely tranquillity, Chris
Thanks Andy, it was a pretty calm shoot
Great shot – I really like those long orange light reflections against the blue. And I appreciate hearing about your workflow too as I am still groping my way through HDR methods.
Thanks ehpem, and don’t worry about the HDR I think we have all been there (I know I have and still have the odd moment). Keeping the Orange reflections involved a bit of masking as I wanted to also enhance the blue tones.
The composition coupled with that killer light makes this a great image Chris. Should be on your wall.
Thanks Len, that’s good of you to say so
I am so happy to see you back shooting and posting again, Chris! WONDERFUL photograph, my friend, absolutely smashing! Great tones and details here, totally top drawer!
Thanks Scott, I’ve still got it you know, I can still hobble down the road and churn out a few shots,
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Looks like you got a perfect balance of natural and man-made lighting!
Thanks Mike, there was a lot of stray light around so it was a difficult balance, made worse by standing in the mud of the river bed.
I’m glad I found your blog, your photography is stunning! The reflections, the colors, the details, the sharpness, they’re perfect in every shot. I love the colors in the water in this one.
Ha, you should see the ones that end up in the bin 🙂 But seriously thanks for the kind words. I tend to shoot with a rough end point in mind and try to make the shots count and on average spend 5-10 mins in post although with some of this series it was a few hours. I sometimes do a few tutorials on advanced techniques as well which you may like.
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