The Crescent City Connection provides passage across the Mississippi River for those going into and out of downtown New Orleans, which is seen on the right side of this beautiful panoramic image.
Bridges over Mississippi River provides beautiful framing of downtown New Orleans
New Orleans is a wonderful location for a photographer, and the famed French Quarter rightfully attracts most of the attention. But I’ve been wanting to capture some images of the Crescent City Connection that spans the Mississippi River to the so-called West Bank.
So on Tuesday afternoon while passing through Algiers, which is just on the other side of the Mississippi River from the Big Easy, I made a quick detour. My intention was simply to scout out a location for a return trip for some nighttime photography.
Of course, I couldn’t help myself: I hauled my camera gear out and took a series of images that I stitched together for a pretty cool panoramic image.
However, I really wanted to get back down there after the sun set. So I called my son and arranged to pick him up in Hammond a couple of hours before sunset on Thursday.
After fighting our way through the infamous traffic for which the area is known, we set up my tripod right between the two spans of the Crescent City Connection and waited for the light to get just right.
We wouldn’t capture the nice light of what photographers call “the blue hour” because heavy clouds threatening rain covered the city. In fact, the tops of the tallest of New Orleans’ skyscrapers were hidden in the low clouds for much of the evening.
When the lights of the city and the bridges were adding some nice accents to the scene, I took a test shot and knew right away the images would be wonderful — even with the thick clouds. In fact, I really think the clouds add some drama to the scene.
The nighttime panoramic image was composed of 34 individual frames stitched together in Photoshop and processed in Color Efex Pro.
I didn’t get home until midnight and I had to get up before sunrise to set up for another photo session, but the nighttime panoramic was well worth losing a little sleep.