Urban Vibration

Last night, I went out with a friend who is in to time lapse photography. Which basically means You will be sitting in one place for a couple of hours. So, I set up My tripod and proceeded to take a bunch of long exposures. These pictures captured something more than just the lights of buildings and cars passing by. The lights of the vehicles revealed the vibration of the bridge upon which we stood. That bridge being a walk-way, maybe eight feet wide, spanning the ten lanes of traffic on I-35W, just south of the I-94 junction. It was pretty windy early on, but it was the semi trucks that were causing the bulk of the motion. You can see in the cropped image below, the effect of a large vehicle passing underneath. Head lights apear as if the highway was a row of small waves, with increased hight when a large truck goes by.

Despite the constant vibration and the rain early on, I came through with some decent shots of downtown Minneapolis. They are not a crisp as I would like, but the texture added to the streaking lights is kind of nice. A neutral density filter, which I usually do these kind of shots with, was not involved. I will try that spot again sometime, but clearly a more stable position to do long exposure shots with traffic and the city skyline is more desirable. This is a great vantage point though, there aren’t many places in town with such a nice perspective.