Manette Bridge

Author's Comments

Most people drive across the Manette Bridge without ever stopping, which is exactly the condition I look for. Bremerton is a working town with a working waterfront, and the bridge itself is unfussy in a way I have come to appreciate. It is concrete. It is functional. It happens to frame one of the better blue hour views in the South Sound, and almost no one is there to share it with you. I prefer the Manette side, looking back. At blue hour in late autumn, the shipyard lights come on in stages and the gray hulls of the naval vessels read almost soft against the deeper gray of the water. The Olympics sit somewhere behind you in the dusk, and the bridge arcs out into the foreground with that gentle curve that the 2011 reconstruction got right. A long exposure here pulls the harbor into glass. Boat wakes become silver streaks. The lights of downtown Bremerton multiply in the narrows. The pedestrian walkway on the south side is wide enough for a tripod without inconveniencing anyone, and on most evenings I have had it nearly to myself. Bring a jacket heavier than you think you need. The wind comes through the narrows with intent. This is not a postcard place. It does not announce itself. But there is a particular fifteen minutes after sunset when the sky goes that deep cobalt and the working lights of the shipyard start to register warm against it, and in those fifteen minutes the Manette Bridge gives you something quieter and more specific than most of the famous overlooks I have photographed. I keep going back.

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