Burns Park, located in North Little Rock, Arkansas, is the state’s largest municipal park and one of the largest municipal parks in the country. At 1,700 acres, it is more than twice the size of New York’s famous Central Park and counts among its amenities two 18-hole golf courses, baseball and softball complexes, a Bonzai BMX track, a soccer complex, a tennis center, an archery range, and several hiking and equestrian trails. No matter your preferred outdoor activity, Burns Park probably offers it.
One of the more unique features to be found at Burns Park is the covered bridge. The bridge crosses the East Fork of White Oak Bayou as it winds its way through the park. I took this photograph several years ago on an overcast day. My biggest challenge was what to do about the sky.
The cloudy conditions reduced the scene’s lighting contrast but made for a featureless, boring sky that detracted from the image. Since I could not completely eliminate the sky, I used a foreground tree limb and the trees in the background to block out as much of the sky as I could and reduce its overall impact on the composition. The tree limb also served to provide a frame for the bridge along the top edge of the picture.
Processing the image was pretty straightforward. With the overcast sky, the scene was relatively dark, so I reduced the overall exposure of the image slightly to emphasize that aspect of the lighting. Even with the exposure reduction, the sky was still far too bright and distracting. To resolve this issue, I lowered the highlights significantly to bring the sky more in line with the mood of the rest of the scene.
Standing in bright sunshine for so long, the bridge’s red paint had faded over time. Wanting the bridge to be the focal point, I increased the luminance and saturation of the reds. Since the bridge was the only thing in the image that contained any significant red color, this worked to draw the viewer’s eye to the bridge.
I captured this scene in the middle of winter, and I like its calm, quiet feeling. But, what I would like to do is try to recreate this image in the fall when the leaves are still on the trees and full of autumn color. Hopefully, we will have a nice autumn season this year, and I can try to get out and create that picture. Fingers crossed for an amazing autumn!