The Bay Bridge at Night — From Oakland to San Francisco
I lived in the Bay Area for almost 20 years before retiring to farm country in the Central Valley. In all that time, I took only a few pictures of San Francisco, and most of those were snapshots during family visits. That changed last night for the better. I spent a few hours with my friend CJ Glynn on Treasure Island—on which I had not previously set foot—shooting the City and the Oakland side of the Bay Bridge. Treasure Island is an artificial island originally built for the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition, and intended to become a second airport for the city. But with war looming, the US Navy took over in 1941. The naval facilities have since been decommissioned and the island is now in full-scale commercial development. And litigation. But that's another story. It's fun to note the Island's film history; per the Wiki:
From the late 1980s, Treasure Island's old aircraft Hangar 2 (Building 2) and Hangar 3 (Building 3) served as sound stages for film-making and TV, e.g., The Matrix ("bullet time" visual effect), Rent, and The Pursuit of Happyness. Treasure Island was a film setting of the 1939 Charlie Chan at Treasure Island, 1989 Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Berlin airport scene), 1995 Copycat (private compound), 1997 Flubber, 1998 What Dreams May Come, 1998 Patch Adams, 1998 The Parent Trap and 1999 Bicentennial Man. An establishing shot of the 1954 The Caine Mutiny shows the main gate and Administration Bldg 1 to indicate the location of the fictitious court martial. For two years from seasons 3 to 5, Treasure Island served as the site of the Battlebots TV show. The offices and penthouse apartment sets in Nash Bridges were located on the island during the show's production (1996–2001). The island was featured as the base of operations for the prototypers in the 2008 Discovery Channel series Prototype This!. Building 180 (warehouse) and Building 111 (former firehouse) on Treasure Island served as film settings for an NBC series titled Trauma. In 2018, Treasure Island Museum building served as a mental hospital setting for the Netflix series titled The OA. MythBusters also regularly shot footage of their various experiments on the island."
It was a warm, breezy, cloudless afternoon, and we spent a few hours scouting locations, including one overlooking the San Francisco bridge span There are a number of pieces to be made from the session, but this very last image, of the Oakland span of the Bay Bridge—made when I stopped the car just before leaving Treasure Island—is easily my favorite. It combines the grace of the bridge, with the reflection of the water, and the sodium vapor grittiness of the Oakland docks.
Provenance: Phase One XF • IQ3.100 • Schneider-Kreuznach 35mm
Fine Art San Francisco Bay Photography Print
Provenance: Phase One XF | IQ4. 150 |Schneider-Kreuznach 40-80mm
