Thursday, October 27, 2011

Blennerhassett Island Bridge

I've mentioned the Blennerhassett Island Bridge near Parkersburg, W.Va., several times. Today I was in the area, and I found a spot where I could get shots from land.

Photographers are supposed to be a bunch that are always griping about something, so I might as well play the part:

The sky was gray because we had rain all day. At least I got there in the only 30-minute window we had without a drizzle or a downpour.

On the Ohio side, where I was, the bridge is built over a place that loads stuff like sand and gravel and similar materials onto trucks, or from offloads from trucks to barges. I don't know. I only know the ground on both sides of the bridge was filled with semis and rocks instead of flowers and unicorns.

At most spots along the state road where you could see the bridge, there were big, ugly overhead utility lines in the way.

I didn't know it at the time, but my camera battery was dying, and I didn't have a spare. When my battery gets weak, my pictures get blurry. This was the one gripe that I have where it was totally under my control.

So here goes with six pictures anyway.







If I can get back up there next spring on a day with blue skies and green leaves and the scent of freshly cut grass in the air, maybe someone who lives near the bridge will let me use their front porch as a shooting spot. That;s my fantasy, at least.

For the record, the Blennerhassett Island Bridge is what's known as a network tied arch design. If you look at the top picture, you see that the cables hanging down from the arch and supporting the bridge deck are diagonal, not vertical as in most arch bridges over the Ohio River. The diagonal cables and other design features allowed engineers to cut way back on the amount of steel used in the bridge structure.

I like it.