Photography that's a labor of love

(CBS News) San Francisco's new Bay Bridge opens on Tuesday. Thousands of workers hefted the tools of their trade to make it happen . . . and moving among them over the years, a man whose only tool was a camera. John Blackstone has a view from the bridge:

The photographs capture soaring views from near the top of the new bridge across San Francisco Bay. But more often, the photographer focused his lens on the iron workers building the bridge.

Joe Blum - now 72 - has been documenting the construction for 15 years.

"I joke with people, I was a young man when I came out here when I started on this project," he said.

"When they started doing soil samples for the test piles for the new Bay Bridge, I showed up at the barge one day and they let me on," he told Blackstone. "And I've shot virtually everything since then."

His age never seemed to get in his way, as he maneuvered on scaffolding, catwalks and cables hundreds of feet in the air.

Blum said, "I think it's kept me young. I think the exercise is great. You know, the camera bag, when I bring it out fully-loaded, is 25 or 30 pounds. And [I] do a lot of walking, sometimes uphill walking, a lot of climbing up and down the scaffolding."

He took photographs as workers hammered bolts and wrestled with iron to create the elegant bridge suspended from a single 525-foot-high tower.

But as impressive as the structure is, it's the workers that Blum wants us to see.

"The engineers get credit. The designers and architects, they know how to get in front of the camera and talk about themselves," Blue said. "These guys do not at all -- and they're the ones who are taking the plans, the design, the prints, and turning it into a living structure of steel and concrete."

Blum's admiration for ironworkers grows from his own experience. He worked as a boilermaker and welder in San Francisco's shipyards for 25 years.

"What skills do the people who build this bridge have?" Blackstone asked.

"Well, obviously you have to, you know, be fearless in a certain way!" Blum laughed. "You have to be strong. You have to have stamina. And I think you have to have a certain mental and emotional toughness to go out there."

Blum admired the bridge workers, but how did they feel about him?

"There's been a lot of photographers out there," said iron worker Steven Batiste. "We really don't care too much for them, because they come out with a different attitude, almost treat us like animals in a zoo."

Jerry Kubala, Jr., said "When it first started out, we were probably pushing him out of the way, you know? But he would get right in there and try to take the best shots, you know, of us working."

"You could tell early on that Joe was taking pictures of us," said Ed Meyer III, "and the struggles that we had every day."

Blackstone commented on one image of people on platforms who appear to be hanging in midair.

"When I first saw that, I was quite amazed to see them working off of floats - they throw these floats over the side and then climb over the side," Blum said. "Being tied off with their fall protection, but getting out there and, yes, I had pictures of the men swinging a hammer off of these floats, in which you would not believe somebody standing on this thing and hitting something with an eight-pound beater. It's almost like a trapeze going back and forth."

The new bridge, the eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, replaces a structure built in the 1930s.

"I often try and get the old bridge in the background of my photographs," Blum said. "And somebody said to me, 'Well, why do you want that ugly structure in the back?' I see it as a beautiful structure. It was built with the technology and the understanding that they had at that time."

Blum's photos echo those taken in the 1930s by Life Magazine photographer Peter Stackpole. An exhibit of Stackpole's photos at the Oakland Museum of California celebrates the old bridge, and the workers who built it.

Blackstone asked Blum, "Can you imagine that 75 years from now people will be looking at your photographs in the way they now look at Stackpole's?"

"I could hope!" Blum laughed.

Blum may not have to wait for that recognition. The San Francisco Arts Commission opened a show of Blum's bridge photos at City Hall.

Gallery director Meg Shiffler referred to Blum as "one of the most humble people I have ever met."

On the exhibit's opening night, many bridge workers came to see how Blum saw them.

Ironworker Tony Costa is in one of the show's soaring photos. General superintendent Jerry Kent checked out a picture of his son, ironworker Aaron Kent.

"It's about these guys," Blum said of the exhibit's subjects. "You have no idea how hard and dedicated it is to do that work, no matter what the conditions. There were days they worked 12, 14, 16 hours a day. And it was an honor to be able to shoot them."

For years Blum simply collected the photos and sorted out his favorites. It was truly a labor of love. Nobody paid him to do the work. His only income was Social Security and a small pension from his days as a boilermaker.

Now he is selling his photos, sometimes for little more than the cost of printing them.

His reward for 15 years of hard work is winning the respect of the workers he photographed.

"We knew early on that he was always going to be our advocate," said iron worker Ed Meyer III. "We could see it in his eyes and we could see it through the lens of his camera and the images that he took.

"The greatest honor I ever had in my career was being labeled a journeyman bridgeman iron worker," said Meyer. "I think Joe deserves to be called a bridgeman photographer."

For more info:

• Joseph A. Blum Photography
• "The Bridge Builders" by Joseph A. Blum - Exhibit at San Francisco City Hall (through September 27, 2013)
• San Francisco Arts Commission
• "Peter Stackpole: Bridging the Bay" - Oakland Museum of California (through January 26, 2014)
• baybridgeinfo.org
• Calif. Department of Transportation: San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge