A span for all seasons
I鈥檝e been taking snapshots of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge since 2006. I take the photos from the end of Pier 14, a pedestrian pier that extends 637 feet into San Francisco Bay and happens to be an easy detour on my morning bike commute.
Light and weather vary with the seasons, so the bridge itself is like the morning traffic on its upper deck 鈥� reliably present, never quite the same. Stormy days make for more dramatic photos, but I try not to skip the days when nothing obviously picturesque is going on. There鈥檚 value in just showing up.聽
If I鈥檇 skipped a few more days, I might have missed two women rowing, a ferry鈥檚 sinuous wake, or 30 brown pelicans, flying low and soundless, more like shadows than birds.
Some days I can see, before I arrive at the pier, that a photo opportunity is taking shape: The bright red of a north-bound cargo ship appears unusually vivid on a morning after rain; an isolated area of fog turns golden in a cruise ship鈥檚 lights. I鈥檒l sprint if that鈥檚 what鈥檚 called for, and I might, or might not, make it to my spot in time.聽
Even when the photos don鈥檛 come out the way I thought they would, I don鈥檛 regret the chase. Those few minutes on either side of 7 in the morning are unlike any other in my day. It鈥檚 easier to pay attention then. Even so, the lens sees differently than I do, catching light in ways I can鈥檛 predict. Often, when I pull the photos up on a computer later, I see details that escaped me at the time.聽
This practice isn鈥檛 one I planned, or one I recognized as more than a diversion on my way to work, until the day a fisherman was standing in my spot. I hadn鈥檛 known, until that moment, that I had a spot, or that I thought of it as mine. I don鈥檛. It isn鈥檛. But those minutes are. The photos are a way to share them, and I鈥檓 glad I can. But even if I didn鈥檛 have the camera, I鈥檇 ride out on the pier to look.聽
Wouldn鈥檛 you?聽
