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?