Jumping from the Bridge to Nowhere

My late husband had a vivid imagination to match his artistic photographer's eye. Not only did Joe see visible things that the rest of us typically miss, he saw beyond the limitations of most humans' eyes—and embellished from there.

Case in point: Bridge to Nowhere, pictured above. The scene is located on the Cape Fear River near downtown Wilmington, NC. We probably drove past that location dozens of times on the road alongside it. I never registered anything out of the ordinary about the bridge. But Joe did and he knew exactly how he wanted to shoot it.

The problem was the vantage point he wanted to shoot from was not accessible to the public. It was a tower of some sort available only to the city employees who worked there. In addition, the drawbridge wasn't always in the position he wanted.

Those conditions alone might have stopped most people, but not Joe. He had a friend, a police officer, who worked for the city. His friend also happened to be a photographer, a shoot buddy, and Joe…