When it comes to planning a landscape photo at a certain time, all you can do is pray. Pray you’ll get there in time, pray the weather will be fine, pray you’ll be good at hiking despite the fact that you haven’t seen a trail in years. Oh, and pray those 7 hours driving haven’t been for nothing.
Sunset over an (upcoming) Romanian landmark
This summer will see the completion of the third biggest suspension bridge in Europe. Built near Brăila over the Danube is one of Romania’s most important infrastructure projects. So I had to see it for myself, even though it’s 3 and a half hours away.
Thanks to a little app called Photopills, I knew the sun would set right over it on May 6th. Since this was a Saturday, all I had to do was keep my fingers crossed for good weather.
The drive
Nothing to report here, other than nearly empty roads. I was lucky I didn’t have to drive on Labour Day (May 1st), when everybody is heading east to the coast.
The hike
If you have a 9-to-5 job and don’t exercise much, don’t be surprised if your legs won’t listen to you when hiking. That’s the first lesson. The second is always double check the trail you’re on. Proper shoes are a must. And remember to take some photos, preferably on the way up, for continuity purposes. Sadly I didn’t manage to do the latter, so I took some photos on the way down.
The photo
I wanted to have as much dynamic range as possible, so I used the bracketing mode on my Sony a6300. The lens I used was the Sony 70-350mm. All I had to do was wait for the sun to get in position.
The bridge was about 15 kilometres away. Another 80 kilometres till the hills in the background. Definitely worth it.
The surprise
After the sun disappeared behind the clouds and the hills, I packed my gear and headed for the car. I still had to drive for 3 hours and a half. I didn’t intend to make a stop, but the moon had different plans.
