Category Archives: Photographs: Night

Photographs: Night, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Textures, Photographs: Urban/Street

Moonlit Stairway, Wall, and Window

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Moonlit Stairway, Wall, and Window
Moonlit Stairway, Wall, and Window

Moonlit Stairway, Wall, and Window. Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Vallejo, California. February 27, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Night photography of a moonlit stairway, wall, and window at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Vallejo, California.

Compared to most of my night photography, especially the work from Mare Island, this photograph has, I think, more of a noir quality. This photograph was made in extremely dark conditions at the bottom of a dark stairway next to a dark building in a dark corner of the historic Mare Island Naval Shipyard using only moonlight. Oh, did I mention that it was very dark? :-)

Making this a bit more of a technical challenge, in order to get the composition I had in mind (more or less, since it was impossible to really see the scene fully) I needed to shoot from a position very close to the bottom of the stairway and close to the window at lower right. Since I didn’t want to lose sharpness on the far section of the wall that is lit by moonlight I had to use a small aperture of f/16. But in order to maintain image quality I didn’t want to raise the ISO too far.Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place! So the exposure ended up being very close to eleven minutes long, and even this was barely long enough. (And, using the camera’s long-exposure noise reduction, this meant waiting around for well over 20 minutes to expose the shot and then do the follow-up dark frame exposure. For obvious reasons, I only made one shot of this subject!)

This is going to be a challenging photograph to print! I think that it really needs to go all the way to black in portions of the lower left, but I’ll need to keep at least a small amount of near-black detail – and I’ll have to do a bit of work to figure out how to best print to get the right color/detail in the shadow at the upper right.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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Technical Data:
Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM
ISO 200, f/16, 645 seconds (that’s not a typo!)

keywords: moon, light, moonlit, night, photography, nocturnes, minsy, mare, island, naval, shipyard, historic, vallejo, california, usa, north america, architecture, structure, noir, railing, door, panel, stairs, stairway, steps, pole, shadow, glow, urban, industrial, window, door, reflection, stock

Photographs: Night, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Textures, Photographs: Urban/Street

Powerplant, Railroad Avenue – Mare Island Naval Shipyard

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Powerplant, Railroad Avenue - Mare Island Naval Shipyard
Powerplant, Railroad Avenue - Mare Island Naval Shipyard

Powerplant, Railroad Avenue – Mare Island Naval Shipyard. Mare Island, Vallejo, California. February 27, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Night panoramic photograph of the powerplant building and other structures along Railroad Avenue at the historic Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Vallejo, California.

This is a bit of a first for me – a night photography stitched panorama. This image is composed of two separate exposures which were aligned and “stitched” into a single image in post. (As such, it could be a very large print!) Shooting from an elevated position, I shot almost directly north (as you can tell from the star trails in the larger version). The view looks up Railroad Avenue past the iconic power plant building with its smokestack that is visible from all over Mare Island.

I’m usually a bit casual about exposure time with long exposure night photographs. It isn’t that I don’t care – it is just that one has a ton of leeway when it comes to the very long exposures I typically use. For example, on a 3 minute exposure you would have to be off by three minutes to overexpose by one stop! So rather than use a stopwatch or an automatic timer I just count to myself. I’m usually will within a 10% error, and that is good enough. However, when stitching “good enough” often isn’t. The separate component frames really need to be quite similar, so in this case I resorted to using my watch to get relatively accurate 90 second exposures.

Another interesting factor in night photography is illustrated in this photo, namely the wildly varied colors of the light sources we deal with. There are three dominant sources in this image. The overall illumination comes from the full moon, which is quite similar to day light in terms of white balance. On the near wall of the brick power plant there is very “hot” and saturated yellow/red tinted light, probably from sodium vapor lamps. Near the left end of the image is an old wooden building that is illuminated by very green light, which I believe comes from mercury vapor lamps. I often chuckle a bit when people speak of “white balancing” the color in a scene like this. If you pick one source for your white balance you’ll throw the others even more out of line. My philosophy is usually to just go with what looks right!

Finally, the idea of making the stitched panorama came from the recently started Panocturnists web site, begun by people connected with The Nocturnes, the San Francisco Bay Area night photography group. I was intrigued by the idea of creating panoramic night photography, and I’ve done a few images along these lines on my two most recent visits to Mare Island.

(More of my Mare Island photographs)

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

G Dan Mitchell Photography | Twitter | Friendfeed | Facebook | Facebook Fan Page | Email

Technical Data:
Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM
ISO 200, f/8, 90 seconds

keywords: powerplant, building, structure, railroad, avenue, street, track, asphalt, sky, dark, night, photography, star, trail, color, light, yellow, red, blue, smoke, stack, cyclone, fence, brick, glow, panorama, panocturnes, minsy, san francisco bay area, window, antenna, vallejo, california, usa, north america, mare, island, naval, shipyard, stock

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

Towers and Brick Building, Full Moon Light

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Towers and Brick Building, Full Moon Light
Towers and Brick Building, Full Moon Light

Towers and Brick Building, Full Moon Light. Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Vallejo, California. February 27, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Industrial towers and brick building under the light of the full moon at Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Vallejo, California.

On February 27, for the second time this month, I visited Mare Island Naval Shipyard to do night photography with The Nocturnes, the San Francisco Bay Area night photography group. (Anyone looking for great resources on night photography should visit their web site. They also offer classes and workshops on night photography.) This was a “Mare Islands Alumni” event, attended by quite a few folks who have done night photography at Mare Island. One of the highlights came before the actual photography began as we met in the museum building and had a chance to view work by participating photographers – the work gets better every time and there was some wonderful night photography on display.

One attraction on this night was the full moon, which appears just above and to the right of the frame in this photograph made near the intersection of 8th and Nimitz Streets, in the heart of the old ship construction area. The was the first subject I photographed – it was something of a “do over,” since I had overlooked some obvious composition problems with the shot earlier this month and wanted to get it right this time. When I originally mentioned that, Tim Baskerville pointed out that I might have a hard time getting the same reflective puddles in the scene, but as luck would have it a good sized storm was just departing and it left great puddles everywhere!

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

G Dan Mitchell Photography | Twitter | Friendfeed | Facebook | Facebook Fan Page | Email

Technical Data:
Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Canon EF 35mm f/2.0
ISO 100, f/11, 353 seconds

keywords: 8th, avenue, street, nimitz, asphalt, puddle, reflection, water, twig, manhole, cover, steel, tower, rivets, bolt, brick, shop, building, window, arch, industrial, stop, sign, full, moon, light, sky, star, trail, cloud, minsy, the, nocturnes, mare, island, naval, shipyard, historic, vallejo, california, usa, north america, curb, sidewalk, night, photography

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

Nimitz Avenue Buildings and Tracks

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Nimitz Avenue Buildings and Tracks
Nimitz Avenue Buildings and Tracks

Nimitz Avenue Buildings and Tracks. Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Vallejo, California. February 6, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Night photography of Nimitz Avenue buildings and railroad tracks at the historic Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Vallejo, California.

This row of old shipyard buildings is along Nimitz Avenue and directly faces the area where ships were apparently worked on. In the distance one of the large overhead structures used to move heavy ship components to the water is visible, and the railroad tracks run up the street in front of the buildings. A combination of high clouds and lower fog is blurred by the nearly five minute exposure time of this image.

This photograph illustrates some of the technical issues that come up when doing this sort of night photography and, in particular, when photographing at Mare Island at night. I love to shoot subjects illuminated by the wildly variable artificial lighting found here, which can include just about every kind of light imaginable: sodium vapor lights, tungsten lights, fluorescent lighting, light bleeding from the town of Vallejo across the water, the light of the moon (though not on this occasion). Here a large part of the lighting is very “hot” yellow/red toned artificial light, making it hard to control the red channel on my DSLR and still get enough light in the other channels. In addition we have the contrast between the very light colored paint on the close building (which is lit by closer lights) and the much darker and less reflective brick surfaces beyond. In front of that runs the road, which is crossed by some deep shadows that I don’t want to end up completely black. And overhead is the beautifully diffused bit of clouds and some star light, but if color adjustments are made to the foreground buildings the sky can end up looking quite strange. Although it isn’t apparent in the shot, a great deal of care is required to to get the composition you want and not place very bright light sources directly in the frame, and this adds a difficult element to creating a composition that you don’t usually deal with in the day time. (I try to keep them out of the frame, but I also sometimes place the camera so that a beam or pole or the edge of a building blocks the direct lights.) Finally, in this case, I had to work close to the buildings with a bit of a wide angle lens, introducing some obvious perspective effects, some of which I’ve modified a bit in post.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

G Dan Mitchell Photography | Twitter | Friendfeed | Facebook | Facebook Fan Page | Email

keywords: mare. island. naval. ship. yard. historic. vallejo. california. usa. nocturnes. night. photography. structures. nimitz. avenue. street. track. railroad. curve. structure. building. industrial. old. dilapidated. abandoned. corrugated. metal. brick. window. door. wire. conduit. pipe. tower. roof. sky. star. trail. cloud. shadow. reflection. asphalt. water. puddle. north america. cyclone. fence. stock. 65. 99. 99A