Ridgedale, Missouri.

Traveling down Highway 86 on our way to Branson, Missouri, we were stopped by a flagman. At first, I thought it was a bridge repair underway, but as we waited for permission to proceed over the bridge ahead, I realized that a new bridge was under construction.

Our stop was so that a construction truck could leave the construction area. That allowed me some time to take a few cell phone photos. Though the bridge is called Long Creek Bridge, it crosses the Long Creek arm of Table Rock Lake, a reservoir created by the Table Rock Dam at Branson.

The old bridge, built in 1956, is in need of frequent repairs due to deterioration. Construction of a new bridge began in August 2023, about a month before we crossed the old bridge. As soon as the construction vehicle proceeded to cross the bridge, we were released to follow.

The new bridge is expected to be completed by September 2025. It will be located south of the existing bridge and have two lanes with shoulders, a wider 10-foot shared-use path, and new guardrails. Traffic counts on the bridge average 8,600 vehicles daily. You can read more about the project here and on the Missouri Department of Transportation website.

About the photos: I used my Samsung S23U to take quick snaps of the bridge and the construction area. I used Lightroom Classic for cropping and leveling, then sent them off to Luminar Neo for finishing work. One tweak needed on all of the images led me to a tip on processing. The Ozark Mountains in the background had a blue tinge in the mountainside green. I usually select the Color tool in Luminar Neo and move the Remove Color Cast slider to reduce the offending color.

When I applied the slider to about 50%, the blue tinge in the mountains was neutralized, but the edge of the mountaintops took on a white halo. I tried Object Select and Mask AI to apply the color shift only to the mountains, but the white fringing remained an artifact when I tried increasing the Remove Color Cast slider.

I then elected to use the mask’s brush tool and set it to a size that allowed 50% feathering. Then, I brushed the mountains to select them. That helped to reduce the fringing immensely, but even though I avoided the transition between sky and mountains if I looked for it, I could still see some halo effect. Some of the halo may be caused by the bright white clouds immediately behind the mountains, and maybe I’m being overcritical. If you’ve run into this issue in your processing and found a solution, please comment.

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never have a specific topic for this feature, and the only rules are that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or another mobile device… If you have an image from a drone or even a dashcam, that’s also acceptable. The second rule is to link your challenge response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post in the comment. Oh, you don’t have to post it on a Sunday.

John Steiner