Rainbow Bridge at Dishui Lake



  • f11
  • 5 sec
  • 22 mm
  • ISO 100

  • f11
  • 5 sec
  • 22 mm
  • ISO 100
Dishui lake is an artificially built, circular lake at the far southeast of Pudong in Lingang new area.
The area is built as a new development zone with shiny new buildings, large roads and impressive infrastructure - but it is lacking some "life". Streets are not crowded, coffee shops empty, it feels a little displaced. On the weekends, the area is busy with people from the city trying to get away from the hustling life.
The pedestrian bridge spanning over the lake is illuminated at dusk and because of the quite slow waterflow, the reflections are well smoothed out.

The following equipment was used to produce this image:






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  • Shooting
    The location is really far out, I guess from every where in the city. I drove 120km from my office and never left Shanghai. It's just huge. I was planning to go drone shooting in the area, but upon my arrival, the sky was filled with airplanes making a turn over the lake to fly into Pudong airport. I checked flightradar to find the height to be at 500m and decided that even though the area is free to fly, I would not take a chance. So I was walking around the lake for alternatives and found this winding passenger bridge with a view towards the luxury resort.
  • Subject
    Framing a bridge is always tricky, you never get everything inside. So I tried different alternatives with landscape and panorama style and finally settled with this perspective. Got dozens of pictures with different illumunations until the sun completely went down in the hazy sky.
    Exposure
    The test shots convinced me I wouldn't need an ND filter to get completely smooth reflections, I like to have some texture left in the water. So a 5 sec exposure was sufficient for my needs.
  • Behind the scenes
  • Editing
    I did not need to edit too much in this picture. After straightending the image, I adjusted the white balance to go more into the blues.
    I needed to decrease the highlights to make the brighter colors less prominent. I finally added clarity to have the structures pop out more and increase the overall dynamic a little bit, to get the purple color of the LEDs a more vivid look.
  • There was not a lot left to do regarding retouching. Just some minor dust spots and a few disturbing reflections in the water, that was about it.
    Given the fact, that the haze was so bad that day and I didn't bring up my drone due to the aircrafts above, I'm over all quite happy with the result. You just have to settle, with that the conditions give youe...