Ship Yard Crane, Night Sky. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, Vallejo, California. April 5, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A gigantic ship yard crane extends high into the night sky, Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, Vallejo, California

For many of us, these gigantic cranes, towering above the historic ship yard buildings and docks, are the iconic structures of the Mare Island Naval Ship Yard near Vallejo, California. The facility has been here since the 1800s, when it was the first naval ship yard on the west coast of the United States, and its history is quite remarkable. I won’t even begin to try to recount it here since a) it is so extensive and b) I’m far from an expert! In the 1990s it was decommissioned and since that time parts of the facility have fallen into ruin, others have been maintained in more or less their condition at that time, and some have been converted to other uses ranging from industrial to housing.

I have photographed here at night for about a decade. It used to be that these towering structures were mostly just parked in somewhat inaccessible locations behind fences along the waterfront. (The folks I photograph with here have a policy of not going into areas that are off-limits, and this had led to generally very good relations with the folks who oversee the place.) More recently the dry dock facility has been put back to use to dismantle very old ships from the “mothball fleet” that had been moored nearby, and now when I visit I often find the cranes have moved and may even be in more accessible locations. The first thing that struck me on this night’s visit was the effect of the security lights playing over the structure—and the fact that the lights are still the older and very colorful lights rather than the newer, more energy-efficient, and very boring LED lighting!

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.
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