Tag Archives: dock

Loading Dock Doors, Townsend Street

Loading Dock Doors, Townsend Street
Loading Dock Doors, Townsend Street

Loading Dock Doors, Townsend Street. San Francisco, California. July 8, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Early morning light on the wall of an industrial building with black loading dock doors along Townsend Street, San Francisco.

This photograph was made very near to where I made another I posted recently, one of a pair of freeway overpasses near the San Francisco Caltrain station. After making that photo, I headed back on Townsend toward the station and as I walked along a row of industrial buildings these loading dock doors and the bright light from the morning sun caught my attention. So, in a suitable old-school approach, I pulled out the camera with the 50mm prime and found a way to frame the scene.

If you are into this sort of thing, you might relate to a few small details in the scene that I like. One is the faint shadow of the two overhead electric lines that cuts a diagonal from upper right to lower left, which also happens to be along the same dimension over which the sunlit diminishes. Aside from the predominant shades of tan on the wall and shades of gray elsewhere, there are a couple of bits of yellow-orange on the curb and the sign near the far right.

If you can read the signs – hard to do at this small size – you will understand that it would be a very bad idea to park here. :-)

G Dan Mitchell Photography
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Industrial Building, Stop Sign, Night

Industrial Building, Stop Sign, Night
Industrial Building, Stop Sign, Night

Industrial Building, Stop Sign, Night. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, California. February 26, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Night photograph of an old industrial building and a stop sign beneath sky with star trails, Mare Island Naval Ship Yard.

This old building at the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard appears to be some sort of warehouse and loading dock, judging by the raised flat area attached to the front of the building and the large doors. I made the photograph from the middle of a large empty parking lot, and in addition to the horizontal form of the yellow corrugated metal building, I wanted to include the green glow through the windows at the far left and the red stop sign. The sky has a bit of a warm glow that is coming from the urban areas of the East Bay – Mare Island is on the fringe of this area.

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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.

Richardson Bay, Morning

Richardson Bay, Morning
Richardson Bay

Richardson Bay, Morning. San Francisco Bay Area, California. February 12, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Photograph of Richardson Bay from Marin hills, showing Tiburon Peninsula, Angel Island, downtown Oakland, East Bay Hills, and Mount Diablo in the distance.

This photograph was shot from essentially the same position as the previous one, a black and white photo of the same vista, though with shorter focal length. I used a longer focal length here to try to enlarge to closer elements and leave out some of the stuff along the edges, and to minimize the amount of sky to some extent. I liked the color version of this – it was hard for me to think about giving up the nice overall blue haze, but even more to give up the was of light on some of the green grassy areas at the bottom of the frame.

There is quite a bit of stuff in this image, so let me describe what you see. At the bottom of the frame are hills above Marin City. Beyond the foreground hills you see Richardson Bay, which is an arm of San Francisco Bay near the entrance to Golden Gate. Across the bay we see the hills of the Tiburon Peninsula and beyond that looms the peak of Angel Island. In the distance and across San Francisco the buildings of downtown Oakland are visible through the low level backlit morning haze. Beyond are the East Bay Hills and the furthest peak is Mount Diablo, all the way out past Concord.

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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.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II (at B&H)

Building 417, Green Shadows and Red Sky

Building 417, Green Shadows and Red Sky
Building 417, Green Shadows and Red Sky

Building 417, Green Shadows and Red Sky. Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Vallejo, California. February 6, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Dilapidated Building 417 under garish green light and reddish sky, Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, Vallejo, California.

I think this photograph probably includes some of the most bizarre lighting that I’ve encountered at Mare Island when doing night photography there. The majority of the light comes from the right, from artificial light that has been roughly color corrected to appear relatively white, at least by comparison to some of the other light colors in this image. The garish green color comes from some add artificial light behind my camera position – the same light that appears in a recently posted photograph of Building 631 with it terribly peeling wooden walls. (One odd touch – note that the shadow of the tree that appears near the center of the lower part of the building is illuminated by this light, explaining the green tree.) The green tones also appear in the stripe of paint along the upper edge of the old loading dock, in the small #417 sign at the peak of the building, and in the less-dark portions of the tree at upper right. Then the sky ends up with odd reddish-brown light reflected on the bottoms of the moving clouds, and a similar tone is found on the wall pattern of the building in the background on the left side of the frame. Finally, though it is hard to see in this small image, there is a bit of sort of grayish-purple in the window frame at the right border of the frame.

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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