The Old Packhorse Bridge
On the third day (second day of driving) in Scotland we made our way through the eastern highlands to Inverness. The day's route was planned to include a stop in Carrbridge with plenty of time for photography. Why, because the Old Packhorse Bridge was there.
This
bridge instantly became a "must see" when I first learned of it while researching locations for our trip. It
was one of the first places added to a map of locations to visit for
photography. Labeled "the oldest stone bridge in the
highlands", whether true or not, it certainly was something to see and a little challenging to find just the right composition.
I’ve visited historical sites before and been surprised to find them surrounded by elements of modern living. Such was the case here, but with some time to explore compositional options I was able to come up with something a bit different than the typical tourist snapshot.
For this subject, one obvious shot was from a viewing platform located st the bottom of a staircase that brought you down closer to river level. Another would have been from the modern road bridge spanning the river slightly downstream. I worked both of these using different focal lengths and even ND filters to get some water smoothing long exposures. Ultimately, the image I like best was from the viewing platform "ish". I say "ish" because I put down the camera bag and stepped up, over and onto the rock of the river bank to get further left than the platform would allow so that I could include the wonderful leaves of a maple sporting fall colour.
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| ' Fall Colour at The Old Packhorse Bridge ' |
It was hard to get the composition I wanted with some of those "elements of modern living" encroaching on the upper right but I worked it the best I could and took care of the rest in post ;-)
I made a number of shots to document the bridge in context with it's surroundings and offer them here to provide a bit of background story of getting an acceptable image in such conditions.
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| ' commemorative plaque ' |
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| ' branches in the way ' |
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| ' someone move that other bridge ' |
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| ' what a spot to put a petrol station ' |
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| ' no clear view ' |
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| ' at least this shows the upstream rapids ' |
In my ranking, this final one might be a distant second to the featured image.
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| ' The Old Packhorse Bridge ' |
DJE
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