Tag Archives: cyclone

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Old Brick Building and Remnants of the High Line

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Old Brick Building and Remnants of the High Line
Old Brick Building and Remnants of the High Line

Old Brick Building and Remnants of the High Line. New York, New York. August 24, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Remnants of the old right-of-way of the High Line Railway run in front of and old and run-down brick building, New York City.

There is, no doubt, a lot of history in this scene that I’m unaware of – but the visual elements mostly caught my attention as we walked past this spot. On the final morning of our August 2011 visit to New York, we were walking from West Village to Chelsea when we passed this area. My son, who lives in Brooklyn and is obsessed (in the good way!) with walking around lots of areas of New York City and making photographs and noting what he sees, first pointed out the terrace in the lower part of the scene (bounded by the railing) and the steel structure at the lower left. He told me that this was part of the High Line Railroad that used to run through this part of Manhattan. A more famous section of the High Line has become a very popular “elevated park” in Chelsea, but in this area it is pretty much just abandoned and, in places, gone.

I don’t know what the tall and worn-looking brick building is, but I’d sure like to know. My hunch, given the appearance of a former white paint job and the proximity to the railroad tracks, is that it must have been some sort of industrial building at some point.

G Dan Mitchell Photography
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Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Driveway and Brick Homes

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Driveway and Brick Homes
Driveway and Brick Homes

Driveway and Brick Homes. New York, New York. August 24, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Black and white photograph of a concrete driveway between tightly-spaced brick homes, New York City.

I’m actually not precisely sure where in Manhattan this scene is any more. We were walking somewhere towards Chelsea when we passed through a little neighborhood of brick homes, and I just happened to notice this little scene as we walked past. Aside from plastic trash receptacles with plastic liners and the air conditioners, I don’t think there is much in this scene to date it, which is one of the reasons that I chose to go with a black and white rendition.

G Dan Mitchell Photography
About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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.

(Basic EXIF data may be available by “mousing over” large images in posts when this page is viewed on the web. Leave a comment if you want to know more.)

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

Shack with Red and Green Interior Lights

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Shack with Red and Green Interior Lights
Shack with Red and Green Interior Lights

Shack with Red and Green Interior Lights. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, California. February 26, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A small shack with interior lit by red and green lights at the Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, California.

At last weekend’s night photography shoot with The Nocturnes at Mare Island Naval Ship Yard I wandered a bit further afield than I have on some previous visits, eventually ending up in an area where I have only photographed once before when I unsuccessfully shot a couple of large barn-like buildings. (I think I have a shot of these buildings from this trip that I like, and I’ll post it later on.)

While spending nearly a half hour photographing a light post against the backdrop of a very dark brick building (which amounted to two photographs, given the long exposure times and the follow-up “dark frame exposures) I kept thinking I saw a faint red glow inside a small nearby building. At first I thought that one of my fellow night photographers might be doing some light painting, but the light seemed awfully dim. Eventually I noticed that it was also quite constant – and light painting virtually always involves moving the hand held light source around in order to get a smooth lighting effect. Once I finished shooting the light pole (unsuccessfully, it turns out) I decided I would go over and see what was creating this light.

The buildings appears to be a small “guard shack” or similar, a very old and very dilapidated one room structure. Inside, as best as I could tell, there is a small table, a few chairs, a digital clock of some sort with green letters, and some kind of very dim red light. Intrigued, I decided to see if I could photograph it. One technical problem was going to be the very large difference in lighting between the bright light on the clock and the extremely dim exterior, made worse by the dark color of the building. I figured that I could probably put enough extra light onto the building’s exterior using a very small key chain LED light than I happened to have with me, and that is the major source of light on the front of the building and on the yellow foreground curve – I simply walked around on both sides of the building and moved the small light over its surface.

In the end, I think this is another example of night photography as a source of a certain kind of “fantastic” lighting. The actual scene was very, very dim, and the the intensity of the colors here is almost entirely the result of the very long exposure and a bit of improvised lighting on the yellow curb behind the fence – a photograph of something that cannot be seen with our own eyes.

More Night Photography

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

Pipes, Tank, and Cyclone Fence Shadows

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Pipes, Tank, and Cyclone Fence Shadows
Pipes, Tank, and Cyclone Fence Shadows

Pipes, Tank, and Cyclone Fence Shadows. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, California. February 12, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Black and white night photorgraph of pipes, a tank, and cyclone fence shadows falling across a brick wall at the Mare Island Naval Ship Yard.

This past weekend I had a chance to join my friends from The Nocturnes for an introduction to night photography at the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard near Vallejo, California. The Nocturnes schedule events at this wonderful and rich location several times each year, and I have done night photography there many times in the past. Many of the photographers at this particular event were experimenting with “the dark side” for the first time, so I decided to go both to do a bit of my own shooting and to help Tim Baskerville answer questions from some of the first-timers.

This bit of industrial “stuff” is in a location I have shot many, many times. It is in an alley next to what is now the Mare Island Historic Museum, and it traditionally the first place that many MINSY night photographers start their evening of night photography. Since I’ve shot quite a few of the standard subjects at Mare Island, I had in mind a few slightly different subjects and different approaches in mind this time. One was to focus specifically on shadows as a compositional element and another was to look for some of the smaller details of the place in addition to shooting the very interesting larger structures that so often get my attention.

So, after shooting nearby structure with shadows angling across the alley, I thought that I’d see what I could do with this odd bit of old pipes and a tank against a brick wall, and illuminated by nearby sodium vapor lamps shining through a cyclone fence. I liked the shiny texture of the pipes and their shapes as they radiated from the central tank, along with the shapes of both the very dark and large shadows and the net of fainter shadows thrown over the whole scene by the fence.

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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.