P#24: A Breathtaking Photograph of the Oakland Bay Bridge

Out on a Limb

Scott Stulberg: This photo is of the Oakland Bay Bridge in San Francisco. This shot was kind of precarious. I knew I wanted to shoot the Oakland Bridge. I love shooting bridges and I'm sure you can travel and find bridges all over the place -- in Australia, in France, and different countries.

There are so many places you can shoot bridges, but many times that bridge shot is going to look better at night. That's why you need a tripod and a cable release and you have to know what you're doing.

I went to Treasure Island. You can see San Francisco is in the background in this image. I went to Treasure Island, taking the Oakland Bay Bridge all the way across from San Francisco to the Treasure Island cutoff.

I had to search for the greatest vantage point I could find. This happened to be right on the onramp to get back on the bridge to go back to San Francisco so I was on the onramp that moved up and down. Every time a car would go by me, I would be moving up and down.

I did not have room to shoot as I was crowded right at the edge there where I could have been hit by a car. Cars are going by me with literally a foot to spare. It was scary. I had one of my best friends with me as a spotter. He would yell out when cars were coming.

Some were 15 second exposures, some were 30 second exposures. I needed him to yell that the coast was clear. Even then, sometimes when he would yell, "Coast was clear," if it was a 30 second exposure, a car would come out of nowhere, the bridge would shake, and the shot would be ruined. (click the image for a larger version)

This shot happened to be a 15-second exposure. No one had driven up after he had given me, "The coast was clear." I'm shooting 15 seconds, which in turn turned up my f-stop to about f11 or f16, which is why those stars happen from those lights. When you're shooting f11 or f16, any of the lights at night become stars.

Instead of using a cross filter on your lens, which softens the whole image, start shooting at a higher aperture like f11, f16, or f22 to get the star effect. Any light in the shot, like from a lamppost or the lights going up on the cables, are all going to become stars.

Many people really like that, including me. The advantage of shooting a long exposure is you're going to get stars at no extra charge from your light sources. Another advantage is the water you see down there, the golden yellowish gold glow. Fifteen seconds is going to make that water going back and forth slowly become a nice blur so

It all added up to a nice shot. Of course long exposures digitally produce a lot of noise so I had to bring it into Photoshop and use Noise Ninja to take out the noise. A lot of the new cameras like the Nikon D700, the Nikon D3, and the new upcoming Canon 5D Mark II can shoot up to ISO 2500, so you can shoot shots like this and get almost no noise in your shots. New cameras are unbelievable.

In Conclusion

They say nothing worth having ever comes easy, and that's definitely true in the world of photography. This shot of the Oakland Bay Bridge may have been one of the most challenging shots to get, but as Scott Stulberg explains, it is well worth it in the end.