Night Photography, Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Night, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Five Night Photographs from Mare Island

November 5, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 5 Comments

I have so many photographs in the queue right now that I have decided to do something a bit different and post some of them in collections. This first group features night photography from the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, a location where I have been doing night photography for about a decade now. As is often the case, this visit was with my friends from The Nocturnes, the San Francisco Bay Area night photography group.

A street light illuminates tracks running down Railroad Avenue at historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard

This is probably one of the iconic views of the nighttime environment at Mare Island, as it was made in a location where many night photographers start, whether it is their first visit or their fiftieth time there. The spot is near the Mare Island Museum, which holds many objects and photographs from the long history of the place as the first important west coast naval ship yard. The tracks – obviously! – given this street its name. The tower is the chimney of the old power plant, and off in the distance more of the old ship yard buildings are visible.

Red light behind the door of an industrial building at the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard

I was interested in the windows, doorway, and wall of this building for several reasons on this visit. First – and night photographers will understand – Mare Island has recently started to see an update of its lighting. As newer and presumably more energy-efficient types of lighting become available, the older lighting gets replaced. Some years ago the move was to the intensely yellow sodium vapor lights (which you can see in other images in this set), but today it is to what I understand are LED systems. Since the ambient light is tremendously important to night photographers, we notice that this produces a significant change in the mood of photographs made here since the LED light seems to have a much more subtle coloration that is closer to what we might regard as daylight. The new lighting has been installed by this building, so I wanted to see how I could use it to make a photograph that still captured the feeling of the night. In addition, I noticed some subtle red interior lights behind the doorway that seem to suggest something a bit mysterious in this scene.

A green tinted shadow falls across the front of a yellow building, Mare Island Naval Ship Yard

There are several things I like about this photograph of the side of a tall building and a lower section casting an odd green shadow. In much night photography we create photographs of things that we actually cannot see – essentially we are making photographs of what the camera sees. Standing in front of this scene it was very, very dark and the details of the building wall was barely visible at all. However, after shooting this stuff for some time I can recognize what might happen with an exposure long enough to make this scene visible. The old sodium vapor lamps are still installed along this street, and I knew that their yellow light would have a powerful effect on the colors of the scene. I also know that where there is a shadow that is not illuminated by sodium vapor light, the shadow will take on the colors of other kinds of ambient lighting – in this case a relatively green type of light coming from a nearby open area. In the end, without actually doing any light painting (the process of using colored lights and gels to illuminate the subject) I was able to make a photograph that is “naturally” just as wildly colorful.

Metal wall with white doors, window, and Reserved Parking sign

The plain and simple geometry of this building and its front wall has attracted me for several years, with its vertical lines, square forms of the door and the shadows, and the surprising orange highlights – and I have photographed it before. This building is now also lit by the newer lighting, so I had to see what I could do with this new coloration. I made two photographs of it. This one is a simple, straight-on view that is “about” the angular and square forms and the thin lines of orange paint and asphalt, with the only curves coming from the shadows in the window and a bit of broken-off pipe near the bottom center.

White door on a metal building with industrial structures of Mare Island Naval Ship Yard in the distance

This is a different take on the same wall, here composed off-center so that some of the darker ship yard machinery and structures can be seen.

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

Cottonwood Leaves, Autumn

November 5, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Leaves, wet from morning frost, litter the ground near the banks of the Merced River

During my recent visit to Yosemite Valley to photograph autumn subjects, I kept seeing a particular stand of very small cottonwood trees growing densely close together near the Merced River. They were in a spot with somewhat tricky lighting, and the first few times I saw them the light was not ideal, so I filed the subject away mentally and figured I would come back and shoot them in the right light. Eventually, I returned, and although the light was still not ideal for the photograph I had in mind – and did not make yet on this trip – I decided to walk out to the trees and take a look and perhaps make a few close-up photographs.

None of the trees are taller than perhaps fifteen feet and some are only a couple of feet tall, but they grow together densely. (My hunch is that in some future decade when they mature only a few of them will survive.) I began by photographing groups of their vertical trunks from outside the grove, looking for interesting relationships among the forms of their trunks and for a few spots where a solitary leaf was still stuck in the branches of a tree. Then I walked into the grove, looking at the trees themselves and at the ground below, which was some combination of dew-soaked and flattened grass mixed with the leave that had fallen from the trees.

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

Autumn Leaves, Reflection of a Monolith

November 4, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 3 Comments

The face of El Capitan is reflected in the surface of an autumn leaf-filled pool along the Merced River

A book might be written about this photograph, but I promise to keep it shorter than that. The book could include chapters on the role of luck in photography, the importance of patience, knowing places well, looking at things other than the most obvious, not forgetting to look at the obvious as well, the pleasure of finding like-minded friends in such places, the importance of wandering around slowly, and more.

Every autumn, right around the end of October, I like to go to Yosemite Valley to photograph fall subjects. This mostly means the fall colors of cottonwoods, black oaks, big leaf maples, and dogwood trees – though it also includes the beautiful brown, rust, golden, and tan colors of autumn meadows. It also includes the magical fall light of the Sierra. I’ve never been able to quite put my finger on just what it is that makes this light so special, but I am certain that it is different. When the timing works out just right – as it did on this visit – the first snows of the season might have fallen, and there will be at least a dusting along the rim of the Valley. The Valley slows down in other ways at this time of year, too. The visitors to the Valley are different. There are fewer in general, and especially there are fewer of those who might seem to be checking another goal off the list, and more who genuinely know and love the place. Only the committed – or the poor and RV owners – stay in campgrounds, so you can just show up and get a camp site. Interestingly, although there are far fewer people, I’m much more likely to run into folks I know, which seems to be one of the special pleasures of this recent visit.

As I photographed during this trip, I more or less followed the light and my intuition around the Valley. I might get an idea to go shoot some subject, and along the way I would find something else worth shooting… and many other things worth remembering for a later visit. One of the things on the mental list was a single isolated dogwood tree sitting back in a dark section of forest off to the side of the roadway. I passed it several times, each time thinking about coming back and photographing it, and I finally made it there late on my final day in the Valley. I parked – and no one else at all was around – picked up my gear and walked off into the woods. This light in the shadows along the base of the Valley cliffs changes very slowly, so there was no hurry to make a photograph before light went away and I just poked about slowly, looking at the tree from various angles and considering other subjects in the area. I made a few photographs, and just as I finished a car pulled up and I saw that it belonged to a couple of friends.

I wandered back over that way and after the requisite wise cracks and good-natured insults we realized that all three of us had the same idea to photograph on the other side of the road among trees along the river bank. So, still moving at a relaxed pace and talking as we walked, we headed off towards the river through trees and brush. Along the shoreline I came to a spot where a few leaves littered the surface of the water in a tiny, still cove along the edge of the river. This familiar granite monolith stands not far away, and I found that I could, if I put tripod feet in the water, get both the leaves and its reflection in the frame. I made a few photographs and then wandered off to photograph leaves and grass and some trees and more of the river. Eventually, the light began to fail, and I climbed a small hill and started back to my car through the trees. I happened to look up – yes, sometimes I forget to look up for a moment – and saw that the intense sunset light was striking the granite… and it occurred to me that I might just barely have time to get back to that spot where I had photographed earlier and put those leaves into the reflection of this transformed scene. Fortunately, I knew exactly what lens to use, what aperture to set, and where to locate the tripod, so I could move quickly and efficiently to make the photograph before shadow rose from the bottom of the cliff.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

High Desert Aspens

November 3, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The golden leaves of a small grove of autumn aspen trees against the rolling hills of high desert sagebrush country

As I have photographed the beautiful autumn color displays of the eastern (and not so eastern) Sierra Nevada aspens, I have thought more about variations on this location theme. There is no question that there are very beautiful aspen trees up high in the eastern Sierra, and I go there every fall to photograph them. There are high elevation stands of interestingly twisted smaller trees, dense stands in lower and sheltered areas, some examples of big stands of tall and straight trees, and more. I have some favorites that I return to every autumn, and I still find new ways to see them and photograph them.

However, I’m also starting to think more about some slightly different opportunities for aspen photography that aren’t all that far from these familiar places and which present the trees in slightly different ways. I’d rather not get too specific at this point, so I’ll just say “think east.” This particular group of trees isn’t all that far east, but it has some of the characteristics that I’m interested in exploring: a narrow band of colorful trees set against a more open and barren essentially high desert landscape. Here the trees seem to tend to grow in (mostly) smaller groups, and in some ways they almost seem more special for being a bit less dense and for growing it what seems like a more difficult environment.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Five Night Photographs from Mare Island

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Cottonwood Leaves, Autumn

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Autumn Leaves, Reflection of a Monolith

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High Desert Aspens

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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.