Photographing the Belhaven Bridge

For a good while I’d seen this bridge on Flickr. Never paid much attention to it but it did feature in some pretty cool images. It’s not your normal bridge; this bridge was slap bang in the MIDDLE of the water with no visible means of access either side. Weird!

After a bit of research I found the location, in Belhaven Bay just to the east side of Dunbar. Take a look at Google maps for the exact location; you can actually see it on there quite clearly. I also discovered that the bridge actually does have a purpose, at low tide it spans the Biel Water where it empties into Belhaven Bay and the North Sea, at high tide the water effectively cuts the bridge and the sand flats beyond off. Makes a lot of sense if you see it at low tide!

The obvious time to photograph this place is high tide, so check the tide times before you make a trip out there. Ideally, a tide of 5m+ is what you’re looking for to make sure the small walkway to the bridge is under water.

The location itself is pretty accessible. Lots of parking about and the bridge itself is just feet away near the high tide line on the beach.

The traditional shot here is a mono conversion long exposure, such as this:

If the tide isn’t quite high enough then this is more what you’ll get, not so bad with the path leading you into the picture:

Ideally, you’ll need to lenses to get the most of this location, a super wide and a wide with a little zoom. If the tide isn’t covering the walkway, the super wide will be your weapon of choice, if it is and your forced further back from the bridge by the water then you’ll wish you had a little zoom at your disposal.

If you visit here at low tide then the bridge itself is a worth subject and you can use the better access to the bridge to find a few different angles. This was a low tide shot on a VERY windy day:

Of course, if you’re lucky you’ll get a preferential tide to coincide with sunset, I’ve yet to manage this perfectly but this is as close as I’ve got to the 2 at the right time:

High tide 45 minutes earlier and I’d have been onto a winner; still it does give me an excuse to visit the location again in search of that perfect shot!

A quick note about this location, it’s a great place to be and on a nice night, it’s one of the best spots with easy access I’ve yet to find but if the weather is bad you’ll be really exposed, high winds and rain and not that uncommon, it took me 3 visits till the wind dropped enough to use the 70-200mm lens to get a shot of the Bass Rock from here that wasn’t blurred due to the wind blowing the lens about!