Category Archives: Photographs: Northern California

Photographs from Northern California

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.

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: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Evening Clouds, Tuolumne Meadows

May 7, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Evening Clouds, Tuolumne Meadows

Early season evening clouds above Tuolumne Meadows and snow-capped peaks, Yosemite National Park

Another orbit around the sun; another cycle of summer, autumn, winter, and spring; another Sierra Nevada high country summer season begins to come into view. This year’s seems to come early and leaves me with an uneasy feeling—it never really did feel like we had a winter, aside from a few stray storms here and there. But every season is different and who knows what this one will bring. Regardless, Tioga Pass Road through the Yosemite high country opened this past weekend and the high country once again became accessible, as did the eastern slopes of the Sierra. Every year when that happens, the mountains call and I must go. Sometimes, especially when the pass opens later in the season, I may have a few days and I can stay up there and explore a bit more. Other years, like the one, I have to squeeze in a quick visit between other responsibilities. But I virtually always go during the first weekend when the pass opens, and this event marks the beginning of another season that will likely stretch at least into October, when the snows fall again and the aspens change color.

The pass opened on Friday, but I had other plans and responsibilities. I had other things to do on Saturday, too, so that left Sunday. One of those Saturday activities had me returning home at about midnight, and I managed to get to bed at about 12:30… leaving just enough time for three hours of sleep before my 3:30 alarm went off. I was up, stumbling around the house in the dark to dress and make coffee, and in a half hour or so I was on the road to the Sierra. The sun rose as I entered the foothills, where I stopped to photograph some spring oak trees and green grasses, and while it was probably 7:30 or earlier when I reached the park entrance it already seemed like the day was quite far along. I turned east onto the very familiar highway 120, and eagerly watched for special places I know, looking to see how they were developing this year. Was there water in that pond? Early signs of corn lilies? Water flowing in that creek? The Sierra certainly does look dry, but this was masked a bit by the remains of a snow storm from past week, which covered the ridges with white. Eventually I made it across the range and dropped down to Mono Lake and then drove up a quiet east side canyon to sit and listen to the wind for a while before starting back. I made this photograph during the last hour of daylight in Tuolumne Meadows, as the color of the light changed and the clouds of a passing weather front assembled above the crest.

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

Industrial Building, Mixed Lighting

May 4, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Numerous sources of artificial light illuminate an industrial building from outside and inside

I like night photography for a number of reasons. I enjoy the very slow work, finding subjects and compositions in near darkness and then waiting patiently for long exposures to complete. “Normal” photography can be a slow and meditative process, but night photography must be. Given so much time to stand and wait, I cannot help but notice the stillness and quiet of the night, and to feel the cool and damp air. In fact, as a person who does night photography, these things are almost as much part of the experience as the visual elements.

In the visual context, there are a few things about the appeal of night photography that might not occur to a person who has not done it. When photographing in very low light, what we photograph is often very different from what we actually see. Often the subject is quite dark, even when lit by the moon or nearby lights, but the camera doesn’t care—a long enough exposure can collect more light that our eyes can, and a dim and drab subject can become bright. Also, the illusion that the camera stops time is not quite so strong when photographing at night. Over the course of a many minutes long exposure stars move, lights of cars appear and pass, clouds blur into soft streaks, and the edges of shadows from moonlight blur. In industrial areas such as this one, the lighting is a mixture of things glowing from within and lit from without, and the diversity of lighting—tungsten, fluorescent, sodium vapor, LED, mercury vapor, moonlight—paints the nightscape with wild colors. This building is an excellent example. The upper windows emanate a glow from yellow interior light. Relatively colorless light hits the upper walls, but the light takes on an odd blue/pink tone on the lower building, and the shadows head toward blue.

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

Green Shop Doors

May 3, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Green doors to an immense industrial shop building, Mare Island Naval Ship Yard

I’m intrigued by doorways, especially doorways painted in interesting colors, or which suggest a size different from their reality, or which hint at something beyond the doors. These doors, both the obvious small door at the left, and the larger three section doors to its right that you’ll see if you look a bit more closely, are along the front of a gigantic shop building at Mare Island. Many years ago they were, no doubt, devoted to work related to the ship construction that went on here for many decades. That work ended decades ago, the facility was decommissioned, and much of it was left vacant for a long time.

More recently things have begun to move again on the island. While some areas still lie dormant and others have succumbed to weather and vandals, many others still stand and quite a few of them are now used by small operations. Looking through the windows on this night, portions of the interior were dimly lit and it appeared that a few workers were busy inside. Incongruously, it looked like at least one computer screen glowed on a desk near a window.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Category Archives: Photographs: Northern California

Red Industrial Buildings

Evening Clouds, Tuolumne Meadows

Industrial Building, Mixed Lighting

Green Shop Doors

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