A long exposure hides the cars, but reveals their movements and intents. I chose this photo out of the set because of all of the turn signals on the right.

See the blue wavy sculpture on the left? It represents the curve the Mississippi makes as it passes through Minneapolis and over the St. Anthony Falls.

See the blue LED lights? That’s why the bridge is blue. Good to know eh? I think to appreciate this bridge, you need to get down under it and look up. The view of the city from the road is so impressive that the designers lowered the railings and minimized all structures on top. Many famous bridges flaunt their structure above the deck: the Golden Gate, the Brooklyn, the Sydney Harbour etc. But the St. Anthony Falls keeps her beauty out of site, deferring your eyes to the city she supports. How Minnesotan is that?

When you stand under this bridge, bathed in the cool blue light, you notice that she makes no sound as the traffic goes overhead, that there are no cables or decorative bits, just massive solidness all around. This bridge makes one clear statement: I will never fail you; never.

There’s a freshly paved path down here, under the bridges. You can pick it up at the Stone Arch Bridge. If you go just up just upstream of the Cedar Avenue Bridge and look, you will see this view. I’m looking forward to coming down here in the winter to see what the lights do to snow.

I love all the little hip-height lights around the base of the megaliths; they really give scale to the massiveness of them.

I have a lot more confidence in the St. Anthony Falls Bridge than I in old number 9340. Look at these massive monuments to modernism! True blue in every way. It’s very peaceful under here too, there’s barely any traffic noise and the bridge doesn’t make a sound. St. Anthony proudly carries the life-blood of the city and looks good doing it.

Can you believe that it’s been a whole year already? The new St. Anthony Bridge opened Sept 18th last year. Now a magical ribbon spans the mighty Mississippi, casting it’s cool blue light in contrast to all that surrounds it.

Alas, all is back to normal here in river city. It’s been tough on this great city to be essentially cut in half for just over a year. What was so shocking for all of us who didn’t lose anyone in the collapse is that everyone either crossed the bridge regularly or knew someone who did — 140,000 vehicles a day passed over the old bridge.

This first photo was taken from the Washington entrance ramp going North, ten minutes before the bridge opened. You can see the blue glow of the LED lights on the bridge.

A parade of vehicles began a slow procession across the bridge, a row of troopers, a row of construction trucks and then the crowd that had assembled behind them, honking and hooting!

Here you can see the row of trucks and traffic coming from the University side.

And there they go! It was fun to see all these cheery, happy people honking and waving. A large group of motorcycles came up over Washington and circled back onto the bridge.

If you showed up at this moment and had no idea what was going on, it would seem pretty odd, all these people beaming with joy to drive over an interstate bridge; a crowd assembled to watch normal traffic flow at 5:10am on a Thursday.

After crossing the bridge, I turned around on 4th and stopped to look from the west bank. Unfortunately I shot this from out the window of my idling Jeep, so it’s a little blurry. You can see the 30-foot tall sculptures in the median. They represent the shape of the Mississippi river as it passes through Minneapolis.

A little non documentary treat.

Minneapolis Photographer Mitch Rossow presents daily photos of Minneapolis. Cityscapes, People & Perspectives: Mitch explains composition and techniques.

Ever get the feeling someone’s watching you? This construction worker at the 35W St. Anthony Bridge construction site takes a moment to check out the crowds watching him. I have a hard time typing when someone is watching me, I can’t imagine working with power tools in the wind 150 feet over the Mississippi River.

What a job! Look at all the cool gear these guys have. Just to the left of the red thing in the bottom left is a patch of gray — that’s the bridge, everything else scaffolding and gear.

Look at all this guy is wearing: a harness, knee pads, gobs of safety gear and a huge tool belt (check out the hammer). For those of us who earn their salt slingin’ bits, a real job like this is pretty impressive.

Minneapolis Photographer Mitch Rossow presents daily photos of Minneapolis. Cityscapes, People & Perspectives: Mitch explains composition and techniques.

The Saint Anthony Bridge is going to complete it’s span of the Mississippi River today. The scene of the infamous 35W Bridge Collapse, this amazing new ‘smart’ bridge will be closing the span today. The photo above shows some of the other bridges crossing the Mississippi in downtown Minneapolis. Below is a wider view showing the two ends, hopefully the last time this view is possible.

I went down to the bridge site on Saturday with my neighbor Chris to take the tour. Every Saturday at 11:00am they give tours of the bridge site. It was very busy, but that wasn’t a problem, there were several people giving tours and they had portable PAs so you could hear them. It’s worth the trip, they meet in the parking lot behind Grandma’s in Seven Corners (just off the west bank side of Cedar Bridge).

For those of you from not around here, this Interstate 35W bridge is one block from another city street bridge called the Cedar Bridge, that’s where all us locals go to gawk at the construction.

Minneapolis Photographer Mitch Rossow’s daily photos of Minneapolis and the Twin Cities.

So how did I get those pictures of the 35W replacement bridge construction? Was I flying over the Mississippi River? Nope, there’s another bridge right next to it. The city was wise enough to create a pedestrian lane on that bridge to allow gawkers like me and my friend Matt, also known as Ravsitar, the release pixie of Tips From the Top Floor Photography Podcast.

Yes, that’s fellow Nikonian Matt taking a shot with a Nikon 70-300mm VR — looks good on him eh? Let’s all encourage this newly-minted professional engineer to reward himself with one of his own, or at least a lens I want that I can use when he’s got mine.

If you are interested in learning more about the bridge, I found a Minnesota DOT information sheet online.