Wisconsin bridge, Mississippi River, Dubuque, Iowa
Dubuque has three bridges across the Mississippi River. The photo shows the highway bridge to the state of Wisconsin. The two other ones, connecting Iowa and Illinois, have been in my viewfinder quite often in the past. This one not so much. I went there last weekend to practice and experiment again with my graduated neutral density filters. Our vacation trip is coming up later this month and I like to be prepared for some new landscape explorations.
A lot of traffic on the river, with most boats slowly cruising and people enjoying a hot and sunny evening. We know there is always an exception and the approach of this very fast speed boat was announced by its roaring engine well before it came in sight.
I wasn’t interested in the details of the boat but wanted a long exposure to have a blurred trail, making the speed somehow visible to the viewer, while bridge and even background remain sharp. The darker part of the 3-stop GND filter was pushed all the way down in the filter holder to cover more of the frame, ISO 50 prolonged the exposure time a little more, and by using an aperture of f/20 I ended up with 1/4 of a second. Needless to say that the camera was on a tripod and focus was obtained manually by pre-focussing on the center of the bridge. The water in the foreground had some turbulences that were slightly blurred in the photo, making it a bit more interesting without distracting too much.
Nikon D750, Nikkor 24-120mm / f4, B+W F-PRO Kaesemann High Transmission Circular Polarizer MRC filter, Breakthrough X4 3-stop soft GND filter, Induro GIT 404XL tripod, RRS BH-55 ball head, Vello cable release, @ 66 mm, 1/4 s, f/20, ISO50, manual focus