Govan-Partick Bridge and Tall Ship Glenlee

 

The Photograph

I am working on a series of photographs featuring buildings and scenes around the River Clyde in Glasgow, particularly in the area marked by Govan in the West and Tradeston (and the corresponding areas on the northern bank of the Clyde). This has been facilitated by repeat visits to the city to visit our daughter who is studying there.

I already have a good collection featuring many of the iconic (and not so iconic) buildings along there so now want to concentrate on more vista style images to show more context. Normally I work with a Laowa 15mm f/4.5 Shift lens but I knew I would need something more versatile for this phase. I already owned the Sony 24-70 f/4 lens, but decided to swap this out for the slightly newer Sony 24-105 f/4 instead, mainly so I can get closer compositions of buildings as I expected to be shooting across the river.

For our latest trip, I had some time on the Sunday afternoon/evening and Monday morning to try to capture some images and I only brought the Sony 24-105 as space was at a premium. The weather forecast ahead of time was very unpromising, showing light to heavy rain across both days but I carried on regardless in the hope that the conditions would be tolerable. As it turned out we had lovely bright sunshine for the Sunday afternoon (before really heavy rain for the evening into the early hours) and then again on the Monday morning. 

This particular picture was taken on the Monday morning, we tried to walk along the southern side of the river from Bells Bridge (near the Science Centre) to the Govan-Partick Bridge but found our way barred, so had to walk through Govan before regaining the river bank by walking through a housing estate. 

I have been planning a picture featuring this bridge, the Glenlee and the Riverside Museum for some time. Previous attempts had proved frustrating as I didn’t get a good angle, plus the composition was jumbled with the Glenlee directly in front of the Museum. Shooting from this viewpoint gave me exactly what I had hoped for, the bridge defining one side leading to the ship and then the museum (with some of the museum showing in front of the ship). Getting some of the city skyline behind the bridge was an added bonus. I didn’t need the zoom range of the lens for this, it was taken at 24mm to fit in all of the various parts.

Processing

For this picture I knew straight away that I wanted a very dark sky (which is my signature style I guess) and for the bridge to appear spot lit, with an emphasis on the suspension cables. I have processed a couple of pictures of this bridge already, so I used similar techniques for making my selections as I have previously. I have blogged previously about using the Pen Tool in Photoshop as the basis for my selections (https://andymcdonaldbnwphotos.blogspot.com/2025/05/editing-using-pen-tool-to-make.html)

For the ship, I really wanted to show off the masts and rope work - my inspiration here was one of Frank Hurley’s photographs showing the Endurance trapped in the ice in the Antarctic winter during the famous expedition led by Sir Ernest Shackleton. Making a selection on detail like this is time consuming. I estimate that I spent about 10 hours making this one selection but, like most things, this level of preparation pays back dividends later in terms of time saved and final quality.

I split the museum into three parts, the corrugated metal outer shell, the lighter coloured framing around the front of the building and then the glass front. I created each selection as if the ship wasn’t there and then subtracted the ship selection from each part of the museum selections.

For the river, I applied some path blur to soften the water after I removed some buoys etc that would be distracting. I then created a selection for the sky being careful to exclude the buildings in the background as I wanted to make them part of my overall composition. With the sky selected, I applied a heavy gradient layer to darken the sky. Next I moved to the bridge body only and applied some levels adjustment and a gradient layer to add depth. I purposely handled the suspension cables on their own selection to allow me to really make them pop agains the dark sky.

The ship has a series of linear gradients on it to keep the bows very bright but to have it receding into shadow towards the stern. I applied some extra lightening to the masts and rope work, again to make them pop compared to the background. The museum is brightened and then has gradients applied to give the effect of a pool of light towards the top right, I was careful to ensure that this didn’t extend to any of the areas behind the ship. For the glass fronted part I worked to ensure that some of the reflection of the masts showed, though this is pretty subtle (I hope!) and is something that a more detailed viewing would pick up.

Finally I sorted out the land based background to make it much darker whilst still retaining some detail. For the buildings, I ensured that they weren’t behind the main structures of the bridge and then applied a couple of gradients to add depth shadow to them. A final going over with the clone tool and a Dodge/Burn brush tidied up the fine details.

You can see more of my work at my main website.