I’ll get back soon to our regularly scheduled bird photography programming. But first, over the next few days, I’m going to share some photographs I took a couple weekends ago on a foggy Friday night in Astoria (as with this bridge) and at Ft. Stevens State Park. This image of the Astoria-Megler Bridge is an experiment in both long exposure (8 seconds) and focus stacking: it’s a composite of 3 images with different focus points, in order to get the scene sharp front to back. It was also a chance to get to know my new-to-me Tamron 17-35 mm wide-angle lens.

Lately I’ve been listening through every episode of Nick Page’s Landscape Photography Podcast. Something I learned recently from that podcast is that most lenses have their aperture sweet spot. I shot the photograph above at f/18, a super high aperture that can cause lens distortion. Especially since I was focus stacking, I could have shot this at f/8 and achieved a sharper, cleaner image. Lesson learned for next time.

The Astoria-Megler Bridge is pretty incredible actually. There are a couple reasons I like this shot, despite never being satisfied with my own work. One is the green moss on the old wood sticking out of the water. The other is how the leading lines of the bridge and those old posts lead the eye into the mysterious infinity of the fog. This bridge is 4.1 miles long. A four-mile-long bridge might as well be infinity. Would you drive across it?

I have at least two other, very different images of the bridge I like; I will share those later this week.

Location: Astoria, Oregon

Exposure: 8 seconds, f/18, ISO 64

Focal Length: 23 mm

Gear:

• Camera: Nikon D850

• Lens: Tamron 17-35 mm f/2.8-4