The Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge Photo Book!

I just finished a book of my photographs of the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge. It contains 40 pages of images I have taken of this new icon in the Dallas skyline. I have shot the bridge under a variety of conditions, from a flooded Trinity River to the fireworks during the opening weekend celebration. You can preview all of the book here. http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/3409682?utm_source=badge&utm_medium=banner&utm_content=140x240

Hope you like it!

The Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, Reunion Tower, and the Hyatt Regency!

I shot this several months ago but I am heading to the same location on Monday and Tuesday nights. A full moon will be rising in line with these two Dallas icons and I hope to get some interesting images including it. Wish me luck.

The Flooded Trinity River!

MHH Bridge Reflected in the Trinity River

My wife thinks I am obsessed with photographing the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge. I do have a desire to photograph it under a variety of conditions. There is about a million different ways to shoot the bridge and I am only about half way there. I also have a separate gallery of photos of it now on my web site.
Monday night and Tuesday morning we had well over 4 inches of rain. I knew this would flood the Trinity River and provide an opportunity to photograph the bridge reflected in its swollen waters. Tuesday and Wednesday evening found me doing just that. I was more pleased with the second nights efforts. I liked the compositions better and the sky also seemed to put on a better show.
 The top image was shot first. The bottom image was shot about 6 minutes later and is a good example of why I sit in one spot and shoot different compositions as the light changes. The Bank One Tower (green building) had just turned its lights on. That is the main reason it wasn't included in the previous shot. The scene had also become darker and I needed 4 bracketed exposures to create the second version. The most interesting change was the color of the clouds. It was now 25 minutes after sunset and there was heavy cloud cover to the west, which is behind me. Within 3 minutes the clouds picked up a dull pinkish look which wasn't there just a few minutes earlier. I might be inclined to think it was some very late sunset color but I really think it was the lights of the city starting to reflect off the clouds. Thirty minutes later when it was completely dark, the clouds still had some of that color in them.

Flooded River Reflections

The last image was shot after all the deep blue had left the sky.  This was from a spot I had not shot from before. I think it made a nice addition to my collection.

MHH Bridge Arch and Cables at Night

The Opening of the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge...Nearly!

The Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge

This weekend the City of Dallas will celebrate the opening of this Santiago Calatrava designed suspension bridge. http://www.mhhbridgecelebration.com This event was planned many months ago and I am sure they were committed to having the festivities even though the official opening of the bridge has been delayed until the end of March. I didn't think they would finish the roads around the bridge in time. Saturday is a free day to explore the bridge. I will be there with my camera. They have not been allowing people on the bridge and I am one of the many photographers that have been itching to get some images taken from the bridge. There is no sidewalk on the bridge and I don't think it will be a very safe place to shoot once the bridge does open for traffic.

I shot this image back in December of 2011. It was the first time I had seen the bridge with the lights on.

To Crop or not to Crop?

 Last week I posted a selection of images of the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge. One of them was this top image but I had cropped it right at the base of the arch. It also had a little more contrast and saturated color. This version is pretty true to how I remember it. I'm possibly having second thoughts about the first version. After looking at the raw file again I am starting to like my shadow running towards the arch of the bridge. The man that is taking a picture doesn't bother me that much. I did slightly crop the left side to remove a distracting person that I still don't want in the picture.

This second image is nothing more than a crop of the first one. I also like it this way but I still tend to be partial to a version without people. I think the shadow of me and my tripod would be enough. What do you think? Which version do you prefer?

The Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge

Recently, I have been making some photography trips to the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge that is being built in Dallas. The bridge which spans the Trinity River is scheduled to open on March 2, 2012. I think for the most part the bridge is finished but the road presently stops at its west end.  The road that connects to it is what they must finish in the next six weeks and from what I see they better start working some overtime.

Reunion Tower has been the stand out building in the Dallas skyline since it was built in 1978 but this Santiago Calatrava designed bridge is quickly becoming the hot subject for photographers. I saw the results from this years Trinity River Photo Contest last week and many of the winners were of the new bridge. I did not enter the contest but I might decide to next year.

The very top image was shot yesterday evening when I made my second visit of the weekend to the bridge. At the end of the bridge there has been a sign that says no-trespassing. I've never seen anyone on the bridge until yesterday. When I arrived there was people everywhere on the bridge. I decided that I would just head out on the bridge and take some pictures too. That was about the same time the sun broke through the clouds and the light was great. It was however hard to take a good shot of the road portion of the bridge because people were everywhere. After maybe ten minutes I decided to get off the bridge and go down the levee to where I had planned to shoot. Right after I got on the levee the cops arrived and made everyone get off the bridge anyway. The nice light also vanished for the day so the very first shot I took was the one I liked best. I did crop off the bottom pretty good but I like it.

 The bottom three images were all shot two days ago. A shallow pond in the Trinity River bottom made it possible to get a great reflection shot on the windless day. The last two are of the underneath portion of the bridge. They really have it lit up. That makes for some good night photography though.

I have a new web site!

This is my first post since 2011 and I would like to wish everyone a Happy New Year and a prosperous 2012. I have also made some changes to the look and design of this blog. I really like it and I hope you do to. My web site has also had a total makeover and the design of the blog compliments it. The new web site now has e-commerce. You can purchase prints or license images directly from the web site. It also has a great image search feature using key words to help you find what you are looking for. I sure wish my web site had included all these features years ago. The links at the top of the page will link you to the new web site. I have also enabled web forwarding so the same URL you have previously used will still take you to my web site. www.clarkcrenshawphotography.com

My Best Images of 2011

I had a tough choice picking the 10 best this year. Several very good ones had to be left out but I think you will enjoy the images and the stories behind them.

School Days

This was shot at the Dallas Heritage Village. The Renner School is fixed up just like it was when being used as a one room schoolhouse. This has been a popular image at my art shows and it seems that a school teacher is usually the one that is interested.

Lake Martin Egret

When I traveled to my last show of the year in Covington, Louisiana, I stopped at Lake Martin. Both mornings had great conditions for photography and I made the most of it. I could have included more images from the trip than I have. Lake Martin Egret received so much positive response on Google+ and 500px that I had to include it. This day had started out much like the image below, but the fog had just lifted and was letting some sunlight in.

Moon Set on Lake Martin

The pre-dawn skies appeared to be clear while I was driving from my hotel to Lake Martin but things really changed when I got within a half mile of the lake. This was one of the first couple of images I took that day and the last one before the moon vanished in the fog. I spent the next hour shooting like a mad man and ended up with quite a collection of winners from this mornings shoot.

Lightning Over Dallas

Summer had been hot and dry in Dallas but late September brought some rain and lightning. Actually, it was much more lightning than rain and was pretty scary when it moved in. I headed to White Rock Lake and felt it  was much safer to get out of the car now that the storm was moving away from me. I took many exposures and combined several of the better lighting strikes to create this image.

San Miguel Mission

The San Miguel Mission is in Socorro, New Mexico. I had spent sunrise shooting at  nearby Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge. It was still fairly early in the morning when I headed back to town and wanted to shoot the mission. Normally, I would want some clouds in the sky but in this case the clear blue skies contrasted nicely with the warm adobe walls of the mission. The shadow fell in just the right place too.

View From the Winspear

On this evening I was anxious to try out a new wide angle lens that I had bought. I was hoping to shoot the reflection pond in front of the Winspear Opera House but a large Christmas tree was sitting in the middle of it. That forced me to look for something else to shoot and this is what I found. The new lens at 16mm did very well.

Reflection of Mammoth Mountain

In late August I spent a week in California. A large forest fire near Yosemite National Park had us changing our schedule but we managed to survive. I got this nice reflection one morning in Yosemite near the Tioga Road.

Jellyfish

On Sunday morning before the Rockport Art Festival I went down to the marina and shot a few pictures. I took a few shots of a jellyfish that was swimming near the surface. It didn't have the bright colors of some of the jellyfish photos I've seen but worked very well when converted to black and white.

Zion Tree

I may be fudging a little on this one. I shot it a couple of years ago but only recently did I process it as a black and white. It was OK in color but I really like it in black and white.

Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge Reflection

This is a new bridge that is being built over the Trinity River in Dallas, Texas. It has been designed by Santiago Calatrava and is scheduled to open around March of 2012. I was walking back to the car after taking some pictures of the bridge and noticed a large pool of water in the river bottom. I got a little muddy getting this last shot but it was worth it.

I wish everyone a Happy Holiday and Great 2012!