photoart friday: Hungerford

Straight out of Charing Cross station and rail passengers are transported over the Thames via Hungerford bridge, into southerly Sussex or East into the Medway towns and far reaches of Kent. At a slower pace alongside, pedestrians cross the waters on the double flanking walkways of the Golden Jubilee bridges. ¹

The conjoining of steel-trussed railway with a cable-stayed, pedestrian walkway is a beautiful piece of architecture and a marvel in terms of engineering. Thus I’ve made it my focus for this week’s PAF theme of hardware:

Collage of SPE effects – click to enlarge

I love the blue-green paintwork of the bridge which combines colourfully with the livery of the passing South Eastern train and the girdled, white spans of the pedestrian bridges. À la vintage rail poster designs, I’ve given this image a more illustrative  look and zapped up the hues and detail, with an SPE ‘melting canvas’ effect. The edit was completed with a metallic, weathered paint look to hang in the gallery with other works of Hardware photoart.

Shall shine the traffic of Jacob’s ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.
Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,
–clinging to Heaven by the hems;
And lo, Christ walking on the water,
Not of Genesareth, but Thames!
Francis Thompson - The Kingdom of God

Notes:
1.The two new 4-metre (13 ft) wide footbridges were completed in 2002. They were named the Golden Jubilee Bridges, in honour of the fiftieth anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II’s accession, although Londoner’s still refer to them as the “Hungerford Footbridges”.

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