Photo of the Week 78 – Evening at Pike Bridge

Photography is all about light, and you get some of the nicest light each day in the hours around sunrise and sunset, or the so-called ‘golden hours’. I’m not a fan of early mornings, so, for me, there is only one golden hour each day, but some of my very favourite pictures are taken during that hour, including this one.

I got this photo on an evening when I wasn’t really planning to shoot, I was out getting some much-needed exercise, and brought the camera along ‘just in case’. I’m certainly glad I did. The light was superb, and it’s very rare that the water is this still under the bridge. The dynamic range was very large in this shot so I tonemapped the RAW file in Photomatix Pro to recover both the shadows and the highlights. I have also edited this image for use as a desktop wallpaper on either a standard (4:3) or widescreen (16:10) monitor.

This is Pike Bridge between Maynooth and Leixlip in Co. Kildare, Ireland. It has two arches, one crossing the Dublin to Sligo railway line, and this one crossing the Royal Canal.

on Flickr – Full-Size

Camera: Nikon D40

Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)

Exposure: 1/80 sec

Focal Length: 20mm

Focal Ratio: f/8

ISO: 400

Camera Mode: Aperture Priority

Exposure Bias: -1.0EV

Processing: Generated by tonemapping a single RAW file in Photomatix Pro