The uninvited guest at the reception party on the hired yacht on the Detroit River was the fog that arrived on little fat feet and decided to stay awhile. Wedding photographer Ryan Southen had expected better weather conditions that afternoon, but he made the best of it. “The fog added a cool blue cast to the photos I took on deck, but I was still getting good shots with downtown Detroit, the skyline and the Ambassador Bridge in the background,” he says.

Then, as the yacht passed under the bridge, the fog, the late afternoon sky and the bridge lights combined to set a great mood for a strong graphic. Ryan made the shot with a D700 and an AF NIKKOR 85mm f/1.4D IF at 1/500 second, f/2 and ISO 2000, using manual exposure and spot metering the lights at the top of the bridge tower. A little post processing brought out a little more of the scene’s color and added a touch of additional contrast. He also cropped the image to a square, an idea he’d had from the start.

“I did a few different compositions, shot it a few different ways, and one of them I wanted to try was a square,” Ryan says. “So I centered the main part of the bridge in the viewfinder, and it worked out well. To me it’s a bit more dynamic. You see many shots of this bridge—it connects Detroit to Windsor, Ontario, and is the busiest border crossing between the U.S. and Canada—but not often do you see them in square format, so I thought it was something interesting to try.”