Once again I have been in Portland, Oregon visiting some of my investment clients. Almost every year that I come to the Northwest I either travel out of Portland to the coast for a vacation, or come into Portland from the Washington-Oregon coast.

The highways in and around Portland are seemingly constantly jammed with stop and go traffic, so it’s tough to plan travel times. As such, I usually take the surface roads through the city, and many times that involves traveling on US 30, especially coming from or going to the northwest Oregon coast.

I have crossed the St. Johns Bridge on US 30 in downtown Portland more times than I can count. The bridge is super cool, in a gothic style. The steel is painted a weathered green-blue, almost like old weathered copper. I have always wanted to photograph it. But, that’s impossible as one is driving across this super narrow, 4 lane old suspension bridge.

Well, as I had a free day in Portland between meetings, I decided to figure out how to photograph the bridge. There is a park that is literally right under the north side of the bridge as it spans the Willamette River. Cathedral Park offers some great views from under and near the St. Johns Bridge.

The St. Johns Bridge is the only suspension bridge in the Willamette valley, and was opened on June 13, 1931 – about 93 years ago! The bridge crosses the river with a clearance of 205 feet (62.48 meters). It’s two main suspension towers are 400 feet high (121.92 meters)! The bridge was named after the community on its north end – St. Johns. At the time of its construction, the St. Johns Bridge was the longest suspension bridge west of the Mississippi River!

I shot this photograph in the morning, around 10:00 am. The light was good, and the sky was really nice with lots of interesting clouds. With the bridge being a kind of greenish-blue and the background a green forest, I thought the photograph might look better as a monochrome.

So, I converted the image to a black and white using Adobe’s “infrared” algorithm. I bumped up the shadow brightness just a touch, and then also bumped up the contrast a bit too. Then I added a filter (an 85 warming filter with a 30% density) to give the photo a warmer feel.

Sorry for the long delay between posts; work has been crazy busy this summer. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this cool old gothic bridge. Thanks for stopping by my blog, and have fun out there!