San Francisco. Sort Of.

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. It was a warm, breezy, cloudless afternoon, and we spent a few hours scouting location. 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 on the way home, 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.

The new Oakland segment of the Bay Bridge gleaming at night.
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Corvus

The eastern span of the Bay Bridge at night reads as a study in engineered light: the self-anchored suspension tower rises from the darkness while the bridge deck traces a luminous arc across the frame, its reflection fragmenting in the water below. Greg titled this image "Corvus" — the crow, the raven, the constellation — a name that captures both the darkness of the image and something watchful in its geometry. The new eastern span, opened in 2013 after decades of seismic retrofit controversy, is the largest self-anchored suspension bridge in the world, a fact you feel in the image's scale. Made on medium format, the image holds the lit cables sharp and the shadows fully open — in a way that makes large-format printing of this scene possible.

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