Suspended – Weekly Top Shot #39
Suspended – Weekly Top Shot #39

Suspended – Weekly Top Shot #39

East 21st Street Cable-Stayed Bridge - Tacoma WA

A beautiful bridge graces the Port of Tacoma. The East 21st Street Cable-Stayed bridge carries traffic over the Thea Foss Waterway. When opened in 1997, it was only one of thirteen such bridges in the country. The towers rise 180 feet above the bridge deck and spans 707 feet. Graceful, sleek and modern, it is very photogenic. Here traffic was caught traversing D Street under the bridge and a semi truck moving south to north on the span.

I normally do not tweak my images much, (white balance, exposure, contrast etc.), but recently I’ve had the hankering to capture star-trails again. I purchased an interval timer a couple years ago to enable my camera to automatically shoot several hundred 20 or 30 second exposures. Trouble is the night sky in the urban area of Seattle is a Class 8 or 9 dark sky, very bright (about as bright as it gets). Because of the light pollution, in my area I have to either travel to rural central Washington state or to the coast along the Pacific Ocean to reach a Class 2 dark sky on the Bortle scale. I still haven’t had a chance to try it out yet. My daughter wants to go with me and give shooting the stars a shot, we’re hoping to go before school starts.  All that to say, I’ve had a freeware program called StarStaX that will ‘stack’ multiple images (like long exposures to capture star movement) to create a final image with the streaks and arcs of light in the night sky. Last night I took multiple images of single vehicles traveling under and over the East 21st Street bridge and then used this software to stack them into the single final image I’ve uploaded today. (Each of the six images were shot at 15mm focal length, f4, 3 second exposure on a tripod.)

If you’re interested to see how the sky in your area ranks on the Bortle scale visit this website: ‘Dark Sky Finder.’  To see what those colors mean on the Bortle scale (dark sky scale) visit this Wikipedia page.  To download StarStaX, visit this website.  Have fun!

(Subscribe to posts via RSS, via eMail).

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

 

‘WEEKLY TOP SHOT’ #39

Weekly Top SHOT
Weekly Top SHOT

It’s time for you to enter your photos in ‘Weekly Top Shot – #39.’ ‘Weekly Top Shot’ is open to everyone and is not themed. Pick one of your posts that pleases you most and share it with us! The linky is open every Saturday morning by 09:00 Pacific Standard Time and will close the following Friday evening at 11:59.

Here’s how to join the meme and share:

  1. Your post must be family friendly, one post per week please.
  2. Submit the url of your blog post, not your home page.
  3. Google+ users – submit the url of your posted photo on G+.
  4. To link up – use the LinkyTools prompt below.
  5. Include the ‘Weekly Top Shot’ badge, or a link to my post in your blog post.
  6. Please visit some of other entries and leave encouraging comments.

(Permalink to create a text link back to this post: http://www.theviewfromrighthere.com/blog/?p=7657)
Weekly Top Shot

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

35 Comments

    1. Madge Bloom

      Thanks Bruce… Each image shot at 15mm focal length, f4, 3 second exposure on a tripod and then stacked to look like there were a lot of vehicles moving under the bridge. (I thought others might be interested in that too, so I just added that info to my post).

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *