Tag Archives: door

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: Architecture, Photographs: Germany, Photographs: Urban/Street

Antiquariat

August 31, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Doorway of a bookstore in Heidelberg, Germany

Once we got off the “main drag” (aka, the “hauptstrasse”) in Heidelberg, the streets became even narrower, the crowds diminished, the number of (mostly) young people riding bicycles increased, and there were more small shops that seemed quite unique. I think that this shop sells used or old books from the looks of it, but I’m afraid that I did not go inside to check – I don’t speak more than a few words of German, so a German bookstore was going to be more than a bit of a challenge!

Visually the store was still interesting, though. I’m fascinated by the interesting colors of paint on the walls and by the rather distressed quality of that paint on these old buildings, along with the odd and perhaps misaligned angles – you can see them clearly here if you take a close look at the door and its frame. There were a few small items sitting outside on the steps, but they hardly constituted a display that was guaranteed to grab the attention of passers-by. Inside you can see the inviting ambience of almost any old bookstore, with the warm glow of a lamp sitting on a desk or table.

Photographs: Germany

Bicycles, Heidelberg

July 31, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Bicycles parked against the wall of a building of the Heidelberg University, Germany

There are many things that seem to characterize Heidelberg, especially the old portion of the town: the historic character of the buildings, the crowds of visitors, the university, the very young population, and the huge number of bicycles. A hint: it sees that the last three items in that list are related. It seems like everyone is riding a bicycle, the vast majority of which are similar sorts of very practical bikes, and not so much the racing bikes or mountain bikes that I tend to see in the US. Folks seem to use them to get everywhere – school, work, shopping, out to meet friends. Given this, it isn’t surprising that bicycles are also parked nearly everywhere, sometimes in huge numbers and other times in small groups, as in this photograph. (It took me a few close calls to figure out that there are bike lanes marked on some of the sidewalks in Heidelberg – I never did completely develop instincts for this while I was there.)

This group of the ubiquitous “work” bikes was parked outside a building belonging to Heidelberg University. The bikes themselves often seem interesting to me, but this little scene was also full of the sorts of features and details that always attract my attention – the colorful patterns of the building, along with its geometrical shapes, the cobbled street and sidewalk with rows of stones leading toward the entry door and the curve of the lighter stones separating sidewalk and street.

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

Blue Shed, Evening

May 28, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A metal-walled blue shade beneath an abandoned industrial building in “blue hour” evening light, near Vallejo, California

This photograph belongs to a genre that might be called Almost-Night Photography. I was at this location to do night photography, in fact, but for once decided to also try shooting the area a bit before the daylight disappeared. So perhaps 45 minutes before sunset I stopped what I was doing (eating pizza, actually…) and drove around a bit looking for “golden hour” photograph opportunities in this abandoned industrial area. I started a good distance from the location of this shot and did my sunset shoot in a more open area full of run down and falling down ruined buildings. After that I headed back towards an area of less-dilapidated but also virtually abandoned buildings.

So I arrived here a bit after sunset as the so-called “blue hour” light was coming on. The structure was open to the west where the post-sunset sky was visible over San Francisco Bay. Some clouds near the horizon still had the bright and orange-yellow colors of sunset, but the larger part of the sky was transitioning toward deep blue. As a result, any place in this image that was in shadow was primarily illuminated by the very blue overhead sky, while the upper windows of the taller building still reflected some of those last bits of color, though they were distorted by the uneven arrangement of the windows to create interesting patterns that are perhaps better seen in a larger presentation of the photograph. There are three buildings in the shot. The foreground round-roofed shed seems to be some sort of storage or work space that might have been added later. Behind that and to the right is a lighter-colored building that seems like it might have held some offices or similar facilities. Beyond that are the mostly glass walls of a very large industrial building that seems to be at least a full block long. These giant old buildings intrigue me in many ways, but the number of windows seems remarkable. I assume that they were designed this way so that people could work inside with little or no supplemental electrical light, and the interior spaces of such buildings can contain beautiful light during the day.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: door

Five Night Photographs from Mare Island

Antiquariat

Bicycles, Heidelberg

Blue Shed, Evening

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