[Leica] At Sundial Bridge in Redding

[abridge at gmail.com (Adam Bridge)]

On the 4th of July the City of Redding dedicated a new footbridge at
Turtle Bay. The span is a cable-stayed structure whose supporting
hollow steel pylon, 217 feet high, acts as the gnomen of a sundial.

My wife and I drove up with her brother and sister-in-law to see it
Saturday afternoon. It was hot but definately worthwhile.The bridge is
a work of art, one in which every person who crosses can participate.
Because it is a pedestrian bridge its scale allows it to respond to
individual footsteps. You can stand with your feet on the glass and
granite deck and reach up and grasp one of the suspension cables
(about as thick as my wrist) and feel the structure resonating with
the crowd.

The supporting pylon is filled with gracious curves and small
surprises, wonder shadow angles which change moment by moment,
textures at the base are in harmony with the smooth skin of the
bridge. And, of course, the sound of the river rushing beneath the
span, conversations about the design. I listened to perhaps two dozen,
all of them INVOLVED the participants. They many not like it, or
understand it (I'm not sure I understand it) but they most definitely
respond to this bridge.

Which, to my way of thinking, makes it art as well as architecture.

I believe Redding has something like the Monterey Bay Aquarium - an
attraction that will bring far more people than they ever envisioned.

Redding is in the far northern end of California's Central Valley, up
against the curve of the Coastal Range, the Cascades with towering
14,000' Mt Shasta, Mt Lassen, and the northern limit of the Sierra
Nevada range. In the summer it's hot, often above 100 F but you can
cool off by driving either North into the Cascades or West into the
Trinity Alps or Eastward toward the Sierra.

I shot with the 10D, an M6 with TMAX100, and the R8 with Velvia and
E100G. Only the digital photos are currently posted at:

<http://www.splitsecondfilms.com/2004-Sundial-Bridge/index.html>

I welcome your comments, of course. I'll be adding images from my M6
and R8 as I get the film processed and scanned. Your comments are
solicited and welcome. I have not attempted to shoot architecture
before - but believe me, if anything crys out for photography this
bridge does. Bring up that view camera!

The bridge, all $22 million of it, was paid for by the McConnell
Foundation. They have a web site at:

<http://www.mcconnellfoundation.org/>

The bridge is the work of Spanish architect and artist Santiago
Calatrava whose other work you can see at:

<http://www.calatrava.com/>

This is his first free-standing bridge in the United States.

Adam Bridge