According to bridgehunter.com I was photographing a through-truss bridge over the East Branch Delaware River on Fish Eddy-Sullivan Road, in Delaware County, New York. I didn’t know that at the time, of course, although perhaps I should have. I discovered that bridgehunter.com is a good way to find interesting subjects of the bridge species and to later understand what I’ve photographed.

A viaduct is a long bridge consisting of a series of short spans supported on piers or towers. In the U.S. viaducts became popular in the era of railroad building to take the rails across wide valleys. Not long ago I had a two-viaduct day in northern Pennsylvania. The best photos are aerial shots with blue sky, fall foliage, and an historic locomotive traversing the span. I didn’t manage that, but viaducts are nonetheless interesting subjects worth capturing.

I found three aspects of viaducts I could treat on a cloudy winter’s day: the panorama of the setting, the craftsmanship of construction, and life under the bridge.

Starrucca Viaduct. Larger version here.

The city of Ithaca, New York, boasts having over a hundred waterfalls and gorges within ten miles. The web led me to one of the more noted, Ithaca Falls. My goal for photographing such sights is to answer the question: “What was it like?” To start with, it was cold. Beyond that, the falls were beautiful, the stream from the falls was in a gorge, and there were a few tourists enjoying the scenery.

The observation level is glassed in, so if any photos are to be taken at all, they will be taken through the glass. The outside of the glass is prone to dust. On a sea coast like Aomori the problem is compound by fine salt mist evaporating on the glass. The image I took of the city’s bridge and harbor looks grayed-out. … The cure is to grab the arrow on the low end of the histogram and move it up to where the levels of the image start.