Tag Archives: bridge

Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Sutro Tower and Golden Gate Bridge South Tower, Morning

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Sutro Tower and Golden Gate Bridge South Tower, Morning
Sutro Tower and Golden Gate Bridge South Tower, Morning

Sutro Tower and Golden Gate Bridge South Tower, Morning. San Francisco, California. December 18, 2009. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Morning traffic crosses the Golden Gate Bridge approaching the south tower with haze-shrouded San Francisco hills and Sutro Tower beyond.

I’ve played around with photographs of the south end of the Golden Gate Bridge from this iconic location above the north end of the Bridge before, including some night photography, but I’ve never quite been happy with the composition. On this morning I got lucky with the thin fog muting the colors and creating atmospheric recession into the distant hills and the warm morning light on the upper surface of the bridge. In addition I tried a different composition – instead of trying to fit the whole bridge into the frame I centered the photo on the curve of the distant ridge and then selected a focal length that included a bit of water, a bit of the area to the right of the bridge, and a good portion of the span with just enough morning traffic. The distant structure is Sutro Tower, the site of a number of San Francisco radio and television broadcast antennas.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: People, Photographs: San Francisco

The Golden Gate, Morning

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The Golden Gate, Morning

The Golden Gate, Morning. San Francisco, California. December 18, 2009. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Black and white photograph of Marin Headlands, north tower of the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, and the Bay Bridge.

Icon alert! Yes, that bridge.

I had business in San Francisco later in the day so I decided to start early and spend time north of the bridge and then return through the City in the evening. As I cross the bridge I almost always assess the possibilities for photography, as often as not decided to not stop since, as beautiful as the view of the Bay is it is not always worth photographing. On this morning though the conditions were a bit special and of a type that we usually only see in the winter months. There are mainly two types of fog in the Bay Area. First there is the “streaming into the Golden Gate type of fog” – which was not present this day – that comes in off the ocean. Then there is the winter tule fog which rises from wet ground on cold winter mornings – and the atmosphere on this morning was affected by that condition.

I made several photographs of the Bay, the bridge, and the City – but this one is perhaps a “triple icon” (for better or worse!) shot in that it includes the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, and the Transamerica Pyramid centered in the north tower of the Bridge. I’ve known about the possibility of this shot for quite a while – but until now I managed to resist! Here I gave in and decided to figure out the location. It is almost embarrassingly easy to find and shoot once you figure it out, but you do need a fairly long lens. (In the full resolution original I can clearly see a couple standing on the overlook at bottom left and admiring the view.)

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Beneath the Bay Bridge

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Beneath the Bay Bridge

Beneath the Bay Bridge. San Francisco, California. September 16, 2009. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A pier beneath the west end of the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge with downtown San Francisco, California.

The light was a challenge in this photograph, but I found the dense and somewhat out of kilter lines and forms of the pier, bridge, and downtown buildings interesting. The photograph was made from one of the piers along the Embarcadero that is used as a parking lot – extending out into the Bay a bit it gave me a view back toward the City over and through the intervening structures.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Treasure Island Harbor and Bay Bridge, Dawn

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Treasure Island Harbor and Bay Bridge, Dawn

Treasure Island Harbor and Bay Bridge, Dawn. San Francisco, California. October 25, 2009. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Sunrise light on the new and old spans of the Bay Bridge at Treasure Island with foreground of boats moored at the Treasure Island harbor.

(It occurred to me yesterday that posting this right now might make sense given that the big news story here in the SF Bay Area is the structural failure of a part of the bridge and the subsequent bridge closure… and area-wide traffic meltdown.)

I had originally planned to be in Yosemite Valley today shooting fall color, but life intervened and there simply wasn’t enough time for a trip to the Valley. Instead I decided to take most of the day and head up towards Muir Woods to do a bit of shooting in the redwoods, hoping for some fall color there. Since I was on the road very early, I had time for a detour out to Treasure Island as I passed through San Francisco so I decided to go out there and try some stitched panoramas of dawn light on San Francisco over the water of the Bay.

I arrived there a good 10-15 minutes before sunrise and made a series of panorama exposures of that iconic scene – perhaps nothing astonishing, but worth the trip half way across the bridge. As I finished shooting this scene I looked back across the road toward the Bay Bridge and Oakland, a scene I’ve photographed before, and was struck by the forms of the backlit towers of the old and new spans of the Bay Bridge, the latter currently under construction. I quickly moved across the road to find a better vantage point and decided to come up with a composition that included the boats moored in the harbor in front of the view of the bridge.

A technical note about what you are seeing. A new, replacement eastern bridge span is under construction next to the old bridge. The structures in crossing the photograph include the old bridge, portions of the new bridge, temporary structures supporting the installation, and cranes. If you look closely (easier to do in a large version than in this small jpg) you can see the cranes at the port of Oakland in the distance beyond the bridge.

This photograph is not in the public domain. It may not be used on websites, blogs, or in any other media without explicit advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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