Yellow Wall, Warning Signs. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, Vallejo, California. November 7, 2015© Copyright 2015 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Night photograph of yellow building wall, doorway, windows, and warning signs, Mare Island Naval Ship Yard

This will be the first of a series of night photographs, made on a recent visit to the Mare Island Naval Ship Yard in Vallejo, California. I have been photographing at night here for more than a decade now. As I return I continue to find new things to photograph as the lighting is always different and the buildings themselves change. For example, on this visit I found that a dry dock area that has recently been used to dismantle old ships is lit in such a way as to light familiar buildings in new ways, and that some ship yard equipment that used to be behind security fences was now more accessible.

The architecture of this old building is found all over Mare Island and in other military and similar locations all over the country. (At a recent exhibit in San Francisco many viewers of one of my Mare Island photographs were almost certain that the photograph was from Hunters Point — and I can see why, as the same sort of architecture is found there.) Many buildings near this one appear to have been damaged in a north bay earthquake that happened not too long ago — a chunk of the building’s roof is damaged, some of the hanging conduit may have come down in the quake, and a corner of the next door brick building is gone.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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