New Bay Bridge Book Launch

After photographing the Bay Bridge since 2008, with the new bridge open and operating since September 2013, a year and a half ago, the book has been printed.  I’ve received a preliminary copy from Nazraeli Press a couple of weeks ago.  The publisher and the few people I’ve shown it to are very pleased, including myself.  The quality of the printing is top notch, thanks to the foresight of the publisher.  There’s a mention on their home page of the book launch with a link to pre-order.

It’s been a long haul through the editing and proofing stages and the book should be ready for distribution in early May, based on shipping and customs clearing.  That is now just a matter of weeks away.  The large high quality printed plates made shooting the project in 4×5 film worth the time and effort, with its high resolution quality and smooth tonality.  The horizontal images are nearly 16×20 inches over the two page spread.

I’ve had a website created just to showcase the book itself:

www.baybridgebook.com

Have a look, as I’d love to hear your comments.

The book is about two-thirds twilight and night images, as most of you know is my favorite time to shoot.  I’ve shared many images in past blogs, but realized many images that made the edit for the book have not been widely seen.  Here are a few of these images.

This image was made on the first evening I shot with the project, back in 2008, not knowing where it all would lead.  As you can see, the skyway is pretty much complete, but the false-work for the self-anchored span was just beginning.  This image was used as the promotional image for the first show of the project of the early stages in Oakland.  That yellow streak is an illuminated boat sailing by.

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This image looking east was shot from the edge of the old bridge roadway.  The footing on the lower left is part of the 1930s structure, with its hot rivet construction, typical of the day.  The concrete columns are now holding up the new bridge.  The bridge on the right is the temporary dreaded S-Curve.

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This view is basically the reverse angle of the previous image, made a few months later in 2009.  You can see where I was on the edge of the old bridge.  In the foreground is the section of the bridge that was removed and lowered to the ground for demolishing and recycling.

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This view, looking east from the edge of the old roadway was made during the 2009 Labor Day Weekend closure to tap in the temporary bypass.  This really is a moment in time, where the old section has been cut and moved to the left and the temporary segment on the right has not been moved into place yet.

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Here is a view made from Yerba Buena Island looking east in 2010.  Finding the right vantage point to produce the tangent between the edge of the roadbed and the crossover section took some maneuvering, but I love the tension of this image, with that huge steel section supported from just one side and the lights of the old bridge reflecting off the water beneath it.

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This image, made in 2010, was one of the more difficult to make, as it was much darker than appears here and I couldn’t really see an image on the ground-glass of the view camera.  I used some of the last of my Polaroid film to help compose this.  It shows the majesty of the monolithic, multi-faceted columns.  A 30 minute exposure was needed (note the star trails) and you can see how the background of Oakland is over exposed to get the details of the dark columns.

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I made over 500 individual 4×5 views in those 5 years of the project of all sorts of times of day and night (not to mention the thousands of digital images), both in the Bay Area and Shanghai, China.  The editing process took many hours of work to come up with the final 78 4×5 images for the book, with the help and input from several people.  Again, I’d like to thank T.Y. Lin International/Moffatt & Nichol, Joint Venture, for their generous financial support of this book.