Category Archives: Photographs: Architecture

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Poles and Shaded Wall

June 20, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A curving arrangement of metal poles leads to the shaded front of an industrial building at a Port of San Francisco pier

I’m always fascinated by the juxtapositions of things – sometimes the ways that the forms of the natural world come together, but also the little surprises in the human world where things that might not have been thought of as being connected turn out to be. I also love seeing and understand how the camera sees differently that we do with our eyes.

This is just a section of warehouse loading docks along a commercial pier on the San Francisco waterfront. While walking along the shoreline I happened to see a road and pathway leading out onto the pier so I ambled that direction. The way was lined on both sides by the long buildings. On one side they were slightly in sunlight, and the angle of the light created an interested relief on the windows and doors and other textures. In this direction the walls were still in shadow, and the objectively somewhat white walls were subjective very blue—or perhaps I have that backwards!. Until you have seen what the camera sees in this kind of light you don’t realize just how blue the shadows are, but here I decided to “embrace the blue” and let that colored shadow light be what it is. The curving arrangement of metal posts struck me as surprising. In a location where most things are arranged in very linear patterns, this curve seemed to stand out, and I enjoyed the pattern of their shadows on the asphalt.

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.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Building 237, Evening

June 9, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Evening light on Building 237 at the Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, Vallejo, California

This is one of a pair of buildings that has featured in several of my night photographs at the Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, where I’ve been photographing after dark for about a decade now. The location is the site of the former and now historic naval ship yard that was the first on the west coast of the United States, being established way back in the 1800s. It was decommissioned in the 1990s, and since that time the facility changed in many ways. Parts of the island are now open space, others have been turned into urban developments, businesses and others are using some of the old buildings and spaces—yet parts of the facility have been retained as a sort of informal historic site.

The buildings in the cluster of which this one is a part are very close to the “historic core” of the ship yard. Although many of the buildings give the appearance of being abandoned, some are in use and all are kept in a sort of state of suspended animation. Almost all of my photography here has been at night, when a diversity of light sources transform it in magical ways. During the day, much of it can seem quite mundane. Buildings that are wildly colorful when lit by brilliantly colorful sodium vapor lights and other colorful light sources often turn out to be quite drab in the day time. On this visit I managed to arrive before sunset, and I headed out to see if the golden hour light might offer some opportunities for a different sort of visual transformation of these buildings, and this one was photographed during the final few minute of daylight.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Red Industrial Buildings

May 10, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Red industrial buildings, one of brick and the other of painted metal, at the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard

Almost all of my photographs of the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard near Vallejo, California were made at night. This has been my primary and frequent subject for night photography over a period of about a decade. I typically show up there at the very end of the day and go straight to the locations where I’ll shoot in darkness, and most often I don’t even really look for photographs much when there is light. There have been a few exceptions, mostly when I have arrived a bit early. I have a few golden hour photographs from the upper end of the island where there are a number of very dilapidated old buildings, and a few years ago I once photographed one of the industrial streets at sunset.

This time I was there with my friends from the San Francisco Bay Area night photography group, The Nocturnes, who were gathering for an “alumni night” event. Since daylight savings had begun recently, it seemed like our schedule was off a bit, and we had finished all of the pre-night-photography events an hour before sunset! So I went out with camera and tripod and made a few photographs of non-night subjects. Many areas on the island seem a bit plain in daylight once you have seen their appearance under the varied illumination found here at night. The night light can turn a boring tan building into a structure of bright yellow or green, with shadows playing over its surface. I decided to look mostly for textures, shape, and color as I walked around in the brighter light, and these buildings, with their combination of metal and brick walls, red colors from bricks and peeling paint, and angles of roof lines seemed like an interesting subject.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Building 237, Early Evening

April 26, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Early evening light on the face of Building 237, Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Vallejo, California

This is one of the rarest of photographs from me—a daytime photo from Mare Island! Although I have photographed here for quite a few years, virtually all of my photographs from this location have been made at night, when the industrial environment of the place is transferred by darkness and artificial light into something mysterious.

By day, many of the subjects that I find so interesting and even colorful at night are often quite bland and boring. Building 237 is the subject of one of my favorite photographs from Mare Island, “Yellow Buildings, Shadows, Moving Clouds.” In that photograph, these buildings glow with an intensely yellow light from nearby artificial lightning, and the motion of clouds during the long exposure creates an aura in the dark sky above them. But during the daytime, the color of the buildings is a somewhat faded and drab sort of yellow-tan shade, and this is even more washed out in typical daytime light. On this visit, largely because the sun sets later by the clock during daylight savings time, we found ourselves ready to photograph well before it was dare, so I decided to go out and look for golden hour light as the day ended. Here that light subtly colors the front face of building 237, whose color contrasts with the cold, blue tones of the next-door building that is already in full shadow.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Category Archives: Photographs: Architecture

Poles and Shaded Wall

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Building 237, Evening

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Red Industrial Buildings

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Building 237, Early Evening

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Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.

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Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.