You can’t visit San Francisco without taking in the Golden Gate Bridge, for which the city is perhaps most famous. The thing about iconic structures like the bridge though is that they’ve been photographed literally millions of times, so when I got the chance to see it and photograph it, though I took the traditional shots from either side, I also wanted a different perspective on the bridge.
Aoife and I came into contact with the bridge quite a bit over our few days in San Francisco – first of all we cycled over it, which is definitely one of the better ways to enjoy the bridge, and the sight of the city and the bay from it. We also flew over it as we started our helicopter tour of the city. Next, we even flew under it on that same helicopter flight – quite an experience. And finally, as we departed San Francisco for our next stop in the wine region, we drove over it.
Aoife was driving, and I was enjoying being a passenger in the uber-cool Ford Mustang convertible that we had rented for the trip. As it was a convertible, naturally we had the roof down, and so as we approached the bridge I thought I’d take advantage of the view that would be available by looking up as we drove under the towers that support the bridge.
I got my camera ready by going into continuous focus mode, and focused on the top of the nearest tower. As we approached, I kept the tower in the frame, let the camera adjust the focus as the distance between us and the tower changed, and fired off a few shots. I did the same for the second tower once we had passed under the first.
It was all a matter of timing, and I didn’t get a shot that was bang on underneath the tower looking straight up. I did get close though as you see here.
Ideally we’d have been driving right in the centre of the road also, but the lanes on the bridge are narrow, and it is busy with traffic, and it would have been difficult to explain to one of the nice California Highway Patrol men what exactly we were doing driving down the middle of the road.
It’s not an amazing photograph by any means, nor one of my favourite shots, but it is a different view on the Golden Gate Bridge, and that was what I was after.
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