On a recent trip to Omaha, Nebraska, I had a chance to walk along and across the Missouri River, which separates Nebraska from Iowa. Being that it was early afternoon under a cloudless sky, I began to look for objects and shapes that would make for good subjects for black and white compositions.
One structure in the area that is hard to miss is the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge connecting the cities of Omaha, Nebraska, and Council Bluffs, Iowa across the Missouri River. I tried various angles looking to capture the interesting structure of the bridge, but most, lacking an interesting sky, were not very engaging, and lacked the most interesting aspect of the bridge – its curving deck.
Finally finding myself as the base of one of the bridge's support towers, I looked up and saw the image I had been trying to find. I have never seen a bridge with the sort of structure shown here. The design, which is becoming more common, is known as a cable-stayed bridge, in which cables connecting to the top of one or more towers connect to and support the bridge deck below. In this case, the deck curves sensuously along the length of its span passing on opposite sides of the towers.
Today’s photo was made with a Canon EF17-40 mm f/4 L USM lens zoomed to 40 mm on a Canon EOS 5D Mk. The exposure was set to 1/60 sec. at f/9.5 and ISO 100.