Friday, May 29, 2009

Single span


Load bearing
London, ON, April 2009 [Click to embiggen]
About this photo: It's "single" week, and if you're feeling Thematically Photographic, click here to share your own single-themed photo. I, for one, can't wait to see what you've got.
This near-magical old bridge, known as Blackfriar's, spans the Thames River in one fell swoop. Granted, I don't live in that London, so our Thames is decidedly smaller than theirs. But an amazingly old, still-functioning piece of engineering history that crosses the river in a single, elegant span is impressive even on our more humble, Canadian scale.

I've explored this structure previously, and I'll be sharing more views of it soon. I guess some things bring us so much comfort that we can't help returning to them time and again.

Your turn: Why does the familiar feel so comfortable?

6 comments:

David Edward said...

hey - just by from netchicks with more questions than answers, so pardon me if I defer to your next guest.
Its been a long week

bobbie said...

Beautiful, intricate metalwork. I'm looking forward to seeing a shot of the entire bridge.

kenju said...

I like the geometry of it, but it is impossibly intricate for a bridge over a small river.

sage said...

Here from Netchick's--love the photo, I like the old iron bridges, but there are few and fewer of them. One was saved here, is in a park across our river (which is more humble than yours!) It's a walking bridge now, and I've often gone there with my fly rod to wade the river in the hopes of landing a nice one.

Mojo said...

Have you ever visited Babooshka at Ramsey Daily Photo? She's got a real crush on the Ramsey Swing Bridge and is currently working on a project (a challenge? a dare perhaps? I'm not sure how it started.) to present 100 different views of the bridge in 2009. I think she's currently up to only 19 though, so I'd expect to see a lot of this bridge in the second half of the year.

Familiarity is stability, stability makes us comfortable. Especially these days when it seems the whole world is getting less and less stable by the day. No matter how adventurous we might be, isn't everybody secretly thrilled to be home from vacation? Because there we're dealing with known quantities. There we know the rules.

So maybe it's not so much that familiarity makes us comfortable as it is that unfamiliarity makes us uncomfortable.

Just sayin'...

A couple of new singles from familiar places... (No, still no self portraits... can't go frightening the public like that).

Thematic Photographic 51: "Single" v.3.0Thematic Photographic 51: "Single" v.4.0

Nikki - Notes of Life said...

So they didn't just name the city after England's capital, they named the river after it's river too?! :)