Missed Bridges on the Way to Photography Spots

Since the beginning of May, I’ve canoed about 30 miles of the Upper Iowa River (link is to my trip report), and traveled to the Badlands, Black Hills and the North Dakota Badlands. It seems like a whirlwind of travel and activity.

Over the years, I’ve spent a lot of time photographing the last three locations and have taught many workshops in all three (speaking of workshops, check out my 2025 Photography Workshops), and I briefly lived in Rapid City and explored the Badlands and Black Hills while living there. I know these areas fairly well.

Despite knowing them well, there are still places in each that I’m discovering and photographing for the first time. One of these locations is the Beaver Creek Bridge in Wind Cave National Park.

The Beaver Creek Bridge was built in 1929 and features concrete arches that appear to originate from the cliffs that it sits on. It’s the only bridge on this type in South Dakota and one of the most significant bridges in the national park system.

While I’ve always thought it was interesting, I’ve mainly just driven over it and never stopped to photograph it in any significant way. Like the roads and bridges that we all drive over and use nearly every day, it was just a way to get across the Beaver Creek canyon and towards the southern parts of the park.

I took it for granted.

Until it was closed for repair, and I had to drive around it with my workshops. That made getting to one of my favorite sunrise locations much more difficult. That’s also when I remembered that it was a neat looking bridge and because I thought they were replacing it, I was disappointed that I never shot it. Luckily, I was wrong about it being replaced.

On this trip I learned that it was still the old bridge, and I photographed it with my workshop group and then returned after the workshop was over to photograph it again.

It’s such a cool-looking bridge and I have to wonder how many time have I crossed it, how many cool conditions have I missed for photography there because I wasn’t slowing down. I was just crossing the bridge to the next location.

That reminds me of all the potential photos that I’ve driven right by while thinking that I should stop. The destination is always on my mind, and I’ve always thought that I’ll get that shot on the way back. When I’ve come back to those locations, the conditions that made it look great as I was driving never reappeared. The opportunity was missed.

I’m sure you can relate to missed opportunities that where missed because you were in a hurry to get to the next thing.

It’s a big cliché to say that we are always in such a hurry these days and need to slow down. It’s probably that humans have always been in a hurry. When we’re in a hurry to get to a destination, we miss opportunities just like I missed photographing this bridge for years.

Now I know that when I’m back in the area I’ll spend more time photographing this bridge. I’m not going to let it get away from me again, but then again it’ll become the destination and I have to wonder if I will pass a great photo opportunity to get to the bridge.

In addition to a photography lesson, there’s a life lesson in there somewhere, too. Maybe the bridges are more important than the sides that they connect.

Until next time

I hoped you enjoyed my pondering about bridges. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be catching up on sleep and recovering from my road trip. Or at least that’s the plan. I’ll see you again in two weeks.

To close, here's a infrared black and white photo from Devils Tower.