Old Railway Bridge - Sault Sainte Marie

[Manfred M]

Old Railway Bridge between Sault Ste Marie Canada and Sault Ste Marie USA that crosses the St Marys River. The river connects two of the Great Lakes; Lake Huron and Lake Superior. The railway connects the USA to the the Essar Steel Algoma plant.

[xpatUSA]

A classic shot!

Vanishing point close to the Golden Ratio ... must be an accident ...

[mugge]

Just great!
Cheers Ole

[Manfred M]

must be an accident ...

Absolutely 100% a coincidence. I cropped the image so that it will print on a 17" x 22" piece of paper. I cropped bottom of the image and this is where it came out.

Here's the SOOC image:

[Digital]

Manfred, very nice photograph.


Bruce

[Jim A]

Wow, one of your very best, Manfred, IMO! Love it! Am very jealous. Would really like to share.

[Tom Barry]

Love everything about this one.

[xpatUSA]

Absolutely 100% a coincidence. I cropped the image so that it will print on a 17" x 22" piece of paper. I cropped bottom of the image and this is where it came out.

Here's the SOOC image:

Thanks for showing the original composition, Manfred.

Is dead-center a "rule" for a railway, road, etc. single vanishing point?

Under what circumstances might it be placed at other than dead-center?

[Manfred M]

Is dead-center a "rule" for a railway, road, etc. single vanishing point?

Not that I am aware of.

I went through my working life looking at a lot of engineering drawings using orthographic projection (i.e. viewed straight on, whether that be from the front, from the side or from the top), so I will often use a straight on view when photographing man-made structures. I worked this scene quite hard and have many different shots of this bridge taken from different positions.

Under what circumstances might it be placed at other than dead-center?

To quote my photographic composition instructor, "when it works".

I don't consciously use the general composition rules in my work. I look at an scene and try to figure out how to capture it, will process it and print it before I taken the shot. Symmetry, contrast, colour contrast, lines, etc. are all processed subconsciously. In this image, I suspect I liked the way the rails turn in at the bottom of the frame (i.e. the part I ended up cropping out).

I generally pay a lot of attention to distracting elements and the use of space. I stick to rules a bit more when doing portraiture; not so much because of the rules, but because they are a way of preventing distracting elements being built into the shot.

[Wavelength]

A beautiful image

[Chataignier]

Much prefer the composition of the cropped version