A Night Shoot (Photo Of The Day April 7)

Port Mann Bridge, at Night

Last night I went out to shoot some night shots down by the Fraser River, near the Port Mann Bridge. When I arrived at the location there was a brief rain shower, which put a bit of a damper on the evening. Rain may not sound like a problem, but the wind was blowing it onto our lenses, which made shooting almost impossible. Around 9PM it stopped raining and I was able resume shooting without any more problems.

The light in this situation was a little tricky, a few minutes before the shot in today's post was taken the crane closest to the pillars for the new bridge was lit up, which meant having to stop down to F18 to get the length of exposure I wanted (at least 10 seconds). The problem was, that I had to choose between the shutter speed I wanted and losing detail to the bright lights. Thankfully the crew finished whatever they were working on and powered of the crane and lights. The exposure settings for today's image are ISO100 and 19.5 seconds at F13. I wanted to make sure that the light trail (red light streaking across the bridge) went all the way across the old bridge, and to do that I shot in bulb mode. I used bulb because I did not know how long it would take for the truck to cross the section of bridge that was in the frame. When the crane was lit up I tried over 30 different exposures in a attempt to get the effect I wanted, but most of them didn't work out because the shutter speeds were too fast (5-8 seconds).