Sunrise through Pelsall Works Bridge

The last time I walked past this bridge it was completely shrouded with scaffolding.  I can now see that they've given the metalwork a lick of paint and pointed the brickwork on the central section of the bridge. It was a lovely dawn period, going from the pinks and blues of pre-sunrise (see extra) to a fiery ball in the sky.  By the time I'd got back to the car the sunlight was extinguished by the clouds you can see in the images.

Technical: This one was complicated.  It's a three frame panoramic stitch, based on in-camera HDR images.  Put together in Lightroom' photo merge facility and then taken into Photoshop to try and minimise the lens distortion that resulted from being so close to the bridge and the wide angle employed.  It hasn't completely worked; the metal framework is actually straight at the top and the bend is at the junction of two frames.  I did a fair amount of work to lift shadow detail and reduce sky highlights.  The white paintwork was quite dull, so I lifted that using an adjustment brush.


The extra image was a lot easier, though I did use a 0.9 Reverse grad as the brightest part of the sky was on the horizon.