Bridge the gap
Shoot a classic wide-angle shot, or go even wider by creating a panorama
Bridges make ideal subjects for cityscapes, especially when they’re lit up, as they usually make for great reflections. It’s also good if there’s more than one bridge, as this helps to provide a sense of depth – plus, with only one bridge, there’s the risk that you’ll end up with a lot of empty space below it, whereas another more distant bridge can be used to fill this space, as is the case with our shot of the River Tyne in Gateshead, UK. It’s this combination of dramatic lighting, reflections and the three bridges receding into the distance, that rightly make this riverside view a real classic.
The question is, how do we take this a step further? Well, more often than not, the clue is provided by the scene you’re shooting, and that was exactly what happened here: while composing our classic version, we tried to include the both ends of the Tyne bridge in the foreground by shooting very wide, but in doing so, we ended up with lots of empty space at the bottom of the image. For the classic shot to work we had to crop in a bit and exclude the ends of the bridge; it was essentially a compromise between getting as much of the bridge in as possible, without ending up with an empty foreground.
The solution to this, in our creative shot, was to shoot a panorama which included all of the bridge, but eliminated the dead space at the bottom of our ultra-wide test shot, as our step-by-step to the right explains.