How “Interval” Became One of My Favorite Black and White Photographs

A Photograph Hidden For Years

Some black and white photographs announce themselves immediately. Others wait years before revealing what made them special. “Interval,” my photograph of the Golden Gate Bridge, was one of those images.

This is the story behind one of my most recognized black and white photographs and how a nearly forgotten image became one of the defining works in my fine art photography collection.

Case in point was one day of shooting in San Francisco.

I was with a companion who had a business meeting, and I tagged along to escape the August heat in Houston. Of course, I was also free to explore the city while she was in the meeting. And then we had some time together to explore as well.

My initial solo excursion centered on the city streets and the famous hills and cable cars, and it produced an image that jumped out at me when I did my initial edit back home. “Walkin’ The Dog” may be found on the site, and not only has it been honored in several exhibitions, but it was the first image I had that was recommended to a collector by AI.

But when my companion and I went out on a  tourist boat in the bay, I was shooting as well. And I soon realized something was wrong.

As I examined the images on the screen on the camera back, I realized there was a part of the image missing. There was a little bit of area in the top of the frame that was cut off, and there was visual information missing from the image. That had not been the result earlier in the day with the photographs I captured on the streets of San Francisco.

A little deductive reasoning brought me to the conclusion that it was a result of the much faster shutter speed I was using to eliminate any vibration from the fact that we were bouncing across the bay on a boat. And, indeed, when I returned home and did a proper test, I had to send the camera back to Canon as it was in need of a shutter overhaul.

Another Look, Years Later

So I think that made me disregard the images from the boat trip, thinking they were not worth looking at, but I did not discard them. And they languished in my catalog for years.

Until early 2026, when I was taking a second look at the cable car images, and spent a few minutes going over the rest of the day’s take.

A couple of images jumped out at me, like this one of some boats taking a “Starboard Tack” (as was explained to me by a sailing friend, and which became its title) directly at us.

I was able to crop out the area of missing information and still get a strong composition, and although it worked pretty well in color, like the street scene it just begged to be converted to black and white.

Doing so emphasized the strong graphic lines of the sails against the charcoal hues of the overcast sky.

The Hidden Gem Reveals Itself

But it was when I got to the sequence of images that I captured as we were closing in on The Golden Gate Bridge that I really got excited.

The soft contrast in the clouds made the silhouette of the bridge all the more graphic. And there it came, one lone sailboat, passing south to north along the lines of the bridge, right in front of us. 

The sequence reveals that I got 7 different exposures, at varying focal lengths and framings. Not a lot. But enough to capture “the one.” The moment when the sailboat was in the perfect position under the bridge right where the graceful arch of the cables swoop down to meet the road bed, and where the mast of the sailboat barely “kissed” that point. 

Some processing to bring out the subtle differences in the soft clouds and the black and white rendering completed the vision. 

Now all I needed was a title.

Several ideas seemed to fit, but it was “Interval” that resonated the most.

Websters defines it as “space of time between events or states“, as in music.

But also “a space between objects, units, points, or states.” Which seemed to em to pretty perfectly describe what was going on visually. And what was brought out so well by rendering the image in black and white.

Today “Interval” has become one of my favorite San Francisco photographs, not because it was technically perfect on the day I made it, but because time finally allowed me to recognize what had always been there.

I liked it so much, it became the landing page image for this site. And it reiterates one of my favorite sayings: “Sometimes the photograph waits patiently until we are ready to see it…”

In this case over 20 years.

But who’s counting?

View “Interval” — Limited Edition Fine Art Print

Today “Interval” is available as a signed, limited edition fine art print in my Monochrome Collection.