I have so many photographs in the queue right now that I have decided to do something a bit different and post some of them in collections. This first group features night photography from the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, a location where I have been doing night photography for about a decade now. As is often the case, this visit was with my friends from The Nocturnes, the San Francisco Bay Area night photography group.
Railroad Avenue. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, California. November 2, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
A street light illuminates tracks running down Railroad Avenue at historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard
This is probably one of the iconic views of the nighttime environment at Mare Island, as it was made in a location where many night photographers start, whether it is their first visit or their fiftieth time there. The spot is near the Mare Island Museum, which holds many objects and photographs from the long history of the place as the first important west coast naval ship yard. The tracks – obviously! – given this street its name. The tower is the chimney of the old power plant, and off in the distance more of the old ship yard buildings are visible.
Industrial Building, Red Lights. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, California. November 2, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Red light behind the door of an industrial building at the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard
I was interested in the windows, doorway, and wall of this building for several reasons on this visit. First – and night photographers will understand – Mare Island has recently started to see an update of its lighting. As newer and presumably more energy-efficient types of lighting become available, the older lighting gets replaced. Some years ago the move was to the intensely yellow sodium vapor lights (which you can see in other images in this set), but today it is to what I understand are LED systems. Since the ambient light is tremendously important to night photographers, we notice that this produces a significant change in the mood of photographs made here since the LED light seems to have a much more subtle coloration that is closer to what we might regard as daylight. The new lighting has been installed by this building, so I wanted to see how I could use it to make a photograph that still captured the feeling of the night. In addition, I noticed some subtle red interior lights behind the doorway that seem to suggest something a bit mysterious in this scene.
Yellow Building, Green Shadow. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, California. November 2, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
A green tinted shadow falls across the front of a yellow building, Mare Island Naval Ship Yard
There are several things I like about this photograph of the side of a tall building and a lower section casting an odd green shadow. In much night photography we create photographs of things that we actually cannot see – essentially we are making photographs of what the camera sees. Standing in front of this scene it was very, very dark and the details of the building wall was barely visible at all. However, after shooting this stuff for some time I can recognize what might happen with an exposure long enough to make this scene visible. The old sodium vapor lamps are still installed along this street, and I knew that their yellow light would have a powerful effect on the colors of the scene. I also know that where there is a shadow that is not illuminated by sodium vapor light, the shadow will take on the colors of other kinds of ambient lighting – in this case a relatively green type of light coming from a nearby open area. In the end, without actually doing any light painting (the process of using colored lights and gels to illuminate the subject) I was able to make a photograph that is “naturally” just as wildly colorful.
Reserved Parking Wall. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, California. November 2, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Metal wall with white doors, window, and Reserved Parking sign
The plain and simple geometry of this building and its front wall has attracted me for several years, with its vertical lines, square forms of the door and the shadows, and the surprising orange highlights – and I have photographed it before. This building is now also lit by the newer lighting, so I had to see what I could do with this new coloration. I made two photographs of it. This one is a simple, straight-on view that is “about” the angular and square forms and the thin lines of orange paint and asphalt, with the only curves coming from the shadows in the window and a bit of broken-off pipe near the bottom center.
Reserved Parking. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, California. November 2, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
White door on a metal building with industrial structures of Mare Island Naval Ship Yard in the distance
This is a different take on the same wall, here composed off-center so that some of the darker ship yard machinery and structures can be seen.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email
Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
Thanks for sharing your processes. I find the tonal quality of that image especially appealing.
Is using a smaller aperture a creative decision? Doesn’t it require a considerably longer exposure?
I choose the smaller apertures primarily to deal with depth of field issues – unless I want to blur foreground and background for creative reasons they give me much more DOF.
I also prefer to use low ISO values in order to produce very high image quality that lets me make big prints – on the order of 24″ x 36″ or more. As a consequence I often end up shooting some long exposures.
In this case, the quality of the bright light sources was essentially a by-product of these other concerns. I needed the small aperture since I was shooting a slightly long focal length and elements of the scene were at differing distances in many of these scenes.
Did you use a small aperture in the first shot to create the “burst” in the light coming from the streetlamp…?
I’d have to look it up in the EXIF to be sure, but I do most of my “industrial” and urban night photography at small apertures with long exposures – so I’m pretty certain that it was at f/11 or f/16.
Dan