I’ve been thinking about the collapse of the Key Bridge pretty much non-stop for the past 2 days. Not only because I’ve driven over it so many times (often early in the morning), or because it’s one of Baltimore’s biggest landmarks, or because I have a fear of driving over bridges – but because I spent so much time photographing it back in the mid to late 2010’s.

One of these photos actually made its way into the news coverage of the bridge’s collapse – to show what it looked like prior to being destroyed. This photo is from 2015 and it’s one of the very first that I took of the bridge. At the time I was pretty new to photography and since I wasn’t looking to make money, I uploaded it to Wikipedia for use on the bridge’s wiki page. It’s stayed there for the past 9 years, acting sort of like the bridge’s profile pic.

Since it’s a free to use image, it was quickly scooped up and used in many different news stories, which was pretty wild to see. I also saw some of my other images from Flickr used in “in memoriam” posts about the bridge. This one was probably my favorite of the bunch:

It’s weird to think the bridge is gone now. I visited the park next to the bridge dozens of times between 2015 and 2020 to get images of it. Because of how particular I am, only a fraction of those ever saw the light of day.

The above shot is probably my favorite of the bridge. The sun was actually rising at the end of a pier I was standing on, and the whole sky just look terrific.

This one is part of a timelapse I did, though I didn’t set the timer as long as I should have, so it’s a little short (8 seconds). I still remember how excited I felt driving into the park this morning, I knew it was going to be a good one.

This was the first sunrise of the summer. This was actually a still from a timelapse I did but never posted anywhere (until today). Timelapses are a ton of work and often times a still images says so much more, which is why I stopped doing them (that, and videos take up a ton of hard drive space).

My car hit a pot hole on the way into the park and I got a flat tire. I decided to hike into the park anyway and dealt with the flat after taking this photo.

This one’s a long exposure, which is why the water is smooth.

The only time I’ve been scared taking a photo. It was just me and one other person in the park. They drove in at the same time as me but stayed in their car after they parked. They kept honking at me from the parking lot (it had to be me, there was no one else there). It was super creepy. After the sun rose I went back to the parking lot and their car was there but they were gone.

This is one of the first pics I ever took of the bridge and the one that’s probably been seen the most. I had to hike along a rock peninsula to get to this spot. It was kind of dangerous, but I still remember the awe I felt at seeing the bridge from this spot and the pride at finding such a neat location. The shot itself isn’t great, but It’s not bad (maybe just a tad dark).

This is the last photo I ever took of the Francis Scott Key Bridge. It has been sitting on my hard drive since the summer of 2020. When I took this I was trying to improve upon the long exposure shot I took back in 2016, but I just wasn’t super happy with it. I also have this bad habit of taking photos and then never posting them anywhere. In fact, this is true of most photos I’ve taken since 2020. It’s sad to think this was my last one of the bridge. I was actually thinking to myself recently that it would be great to go out and shoot again – and I had this place in mind. Maybe I could capture it with a really killer sunrise as the backdrop, but it wasn’t to be.

Anyway, to whoever’s reading this I hope you’re doing well, thank you for taking the time to check out this post.