Cupid’s Span is an art installation just south of Embarcadero along the San Francisco Bay. I went out this night intending to take pictures of the Bay Bridge and I didn’t even know this giant bow art installation was there. I’m sure locals and frequent visitors to San Francisco know this place already but it was new to me. This was actually the beginning of practicing night photography. I go out earlier now to photograph at blue hour with the nice soft light in the sky and some last pink and purple hues as the sun goes down. In big cities, some of the more interesting art and architecture is actually well lit; enough to make it worth going out to photograph after the sun is already down. The popular photo along the bay here is the posts that are remaining from the old San Francisco to Oakland Bay Bridge. That’s been photographed a million times so I was looking for something different. Putting this Cupid’s Span sculpture and the Bay Bridge together I thought made for an interesting photo.
“I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.
I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?
Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.”
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Composition shared by Kay Lynn Gabaldon in her Mind Fragment series on the Voice On The Porch Blog
