I used to take large format photos. 4×5 negatives. Black and white.

The idea was to capture the effect of light. Don’t over expose the highlights. Capture enough to be able to show detail in the dark areas. Beyond that, look for subjects which were interesting and different. Hopefully, whatever I managed to capture would have lots of detail and allow you to study it for longer than just a cursory glance.

The walkway above, which takes foot traffic over a busy expressway, is something that many people saw for its utilitarian purpose rather than as an artistic feature. I was gobsmacked when I first observed it. Went home, got the camera and tripod and was quickly back to record it.

It always took me at least 45 minutes to set up my tripod, mount the camera, focus and adjust settings while under a dark cloth, insert a negative holder and take the image. In this case, my tripod and camera were obstructions to the normal pedestrian flow. Several passers by wondered out loud what I was doing. One even came back later with his own 35mm camera to try and quickly capture himself what the obviously professional photographer was laboring to accomplish.

In the Arizona mid-day sunlight, shadows were cast which you can see flooding across the walkway itself. They mirror the pattern in the latticework above and on the sides, making a tunnel of thousands of small pieces – all connected somehow by engineers and builders. One wonders if the architect visualized not just the patterns on the wall and ceiling, but also those cast on the pathway.

After I shot the image and printed it, I realized that the perspective beyond, the street on the other side of the tunnel, seemed to move upwards into the distance. Barely visible on the upper left of it are shapes and shadows of cars parked along the side of the street. Hidden in the dark on the right side of the pathway is a small amount of litter. I suppose I should have picked it up. I didn’t. It is still there today. In the photo I took.

Light always amazed me. This picture was and still is, rewarding to me. It is one of the first I took as I was learning to do large format photography. And it was the first that I traded to another photographer that I really admired and who is no longer with us today. He told me he was amazed by it and offered to give me in trade any photo of his that I liked. I did so and that photo of his is hanging in my office today.