Like any photographer who is active in Rhode Island, I’ve shot the Newport-Jamestown Bridge countless times over the last few years. At dusk, in early morning, with or without the Goat Island Lighthouse–I’ve done all these and yet will never tire of photographing this lovely bridge over and over again.

The above photograph, taken shortly after sunrise on a bitterly cold January weekend recently, is unique. At least, unique in my collection. And it happened quite by accident.  Here’s the original image, right out of my Nikon D90:

How did I get this original capture, and how did I transform it into the artsy version you see at the top of this post?

As I said, it was bitterly cold. And very, very windy. Not always conducive to thinking first and shooting after. So I set up the camera on the tripod, focused, dialed in what I thought were the right settings in Aperture Priority, and fired away.

Except that I wasn’t in Aperture Priority–the camera was still in Manual, from a shoot the previous afternoon. My usual method of shooting is to start in Aperture Priority but then, if the blinkies warn me that I’ve overexposed or (less frequently) I see that the result is underexposed, I correct it by readjusting in Manual. That’s what I had done the day before, during “normal” daylight, and I had forgotten to switch the camera back to Aperture Priority. Hence the extreme underexposure. The settings were f/14 at 1/125 sec. with -0.3 exposure compensation, and ISO 320.  Not conducive to overwhelming brightness early on a January morning.

Normally I would simply have deleted the image after upload, but this time curiosity got the better of me. Could anything be done with it? So I opened the image in Raw (I always shoot Raw + jpg), adjusted the exposure, then opened it in Photoshop CS5 (my editing program of choice) and simply adjusted a few sliders. No filters, no plug-ins, nothing other than the most basic tools CS5 has available. And I deliberately didn’t de-noise it either; that’s what gives it the “artsy” look, almost as if it were a colorized version of a charcoal drawing.

Could I repeat this crazy experiment successfully? I don’t know–but given the opportunity, I’ll certainly try.

The picture (the Photoshopped one, not the original) is available for purchase on my website at the special Print of the Month price for the entire month of March. Act now–by March 31–to get your own print of this iconic bridge in one of four different sizes.

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Above you see a selection of some of my more “normal” photos, as purchased and framed for a corporate office. The purchaser specifically wanted to display images from my “Windows, Doors, Reflections” collection, and here you see one way of framing them. “Window, Doors, Reflections” is an exciting series for me and one to which I am always adding new images. If you’re interested in a themed display for your home or office, why not take a look at this gallery on my website? You can create your own themes, perhaps from my lighthouse images, or my Monochrome or historically-oriented Modern Vintage collection. I look forward to your visit!