A Twelve Hour Difference

One of the advantages of living where I do is getting to see the George Washington Bridge light up at night.  The bridge is beautiful in its own right, but when the towers light up it turns into a triangulated jewel.  I will generally take my photographs from an overlook in the park that runs along the cliffs next to the bridge.  The Port Authority only lights the bridge towers on national holidays, so I try to photograph as many of these occasions as I can.  It seems like they made an exception to celebrate the Super Bowl; the towers were lit and the suspension cables were lit up with Bronco orange and Seahawk green.

I tried my first attempt late Saturday night.  I've taken many pictures from the first overlook in the park, so I hiked further into the forest for a different view.  I found an overlook that had promise, set up my equipment and took a test image.  Seconds after taking my test image, the bridge went dark.  The timing was perfect.  It's as if someone at the Port Authority was playing a cruel joke on me.

The next day after the Super Bowl, I decided to try again, only a bit earlier in the night.  I didn't want to risk coming home empty handed again, so I quickly took a set of photos at the first overlook, my usual vantage point.  I was curious to see if they would change the cable lights to all be the color of the winning team, but they were still half and half.

I walked out to the other overlook from the previous evening, scaring a few deer in the process, and got one set of shots before the bridge lights turned off again!!

The next morning I woke up to six inches of snow on the ground with more falling.  I decided to go do some hiking in the snow, back to the overlook.  Normally I'd crop the trees out, but snowy trees tend to complete winter scenes.  Oh, the difference twelve hours can make.