Yaquina Bay Bridge

Author's Comments

McCullough's bridges are a particular pleasure of the Oregon Coast, and Yaquina Bay is the one I find myself returning to most often. There is something about the way the arches step down toward the water, the Gothic detailing reading almost ecclesiastical against a coastal sky, that asks for a slower kind of looking. Most people drive over it and never see it from below. The view I want is from the beach at the south end, looking north and slightly up, where the full span resolves into something close to a drawing. Blue hour is when this bridge shows its real face. The sodium lights come on, the sky goes that particular shade of cobalt that lasts maybe twenty minutes, and the concrete catches just enough ambient light to hold its detail without going flat. A long exposure smooths the bay into something like mercury and the bridge becomes the only solid thing in the frame. Fog mornings are the other version. I have stood on the bayfront in February when the arches faded in and out of the marine layer and the bridge seemed to be assembling itself in real time. Those mornings are unpredictable and worth waking up for. Newport is not a difficult town to be in at six in the morning. The fishing boats are working, the gulls are loud, the coffee is somewhere nearby, and the bridge is doing what it has done since 1936. Bring a tripod. Bring more time than you think the shoot will need. This is a structure that rewards a photographer who is willing to wait for the light to come to it.

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