Tag Archives: industrial

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

Brick Wall with Windows and Doors, Artificial Light

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Brick Wall with Windows and Doors, Artificial Light
Brick Wall with Windows and Doors, Artificial Light

Brick Wall with Windows and Doors, Artificial Light. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, California. February 26, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A brick wall with windows and a door is illuminated by garish yellow artificial lighting at Mare Island Naval Ship Yard.

During the final weekend of February I was able to join my friends from The Nocturnes for an “alumni” shoot at the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard at Vallejo, California. I photograph at this location a few times every year – most often with The Nocturnes – and each time I go I find something new or else find a new way to photograph something familiar.

This wall is in a little side alley off or one of the main roads through the facility. Although it certainly doesn’t look like it in this photograph, this is a fairly dark area of the island where rows of large factory buildings (mostly abandoned) are lit, for the most part, by a few security lights. Standing there next to me as I made the photograph, this is not what you would have seen. At best, I could make out the shapes and arrangement of the windows and door, recognize that the wall was constructed of bricks, and notice that the light from nearby yellowish artificial lights was diffused and broken up by shining through intervening fences and other stuff.

But, for me at least, one of the goals of night photography is to see what cannot be seen with our own eyes. The whole idea of a “realism” in night photography seems almost crazy to me, at least when shooting such dark subjects as this one. “Reality” is an incredibly dark and dim and barely visible wall. What is more interesting to me is what the camera can see in the near dark. Here it reveals the intense yellow/orange color of the artificial lighting and the uneven patterns of light and shadow.

(It also occurred to me as I worked on this photograph that while I generally am somewhat conservative with color and saturation and all the rest in my photography of natural landscapes… the wild, garish, and intense color and light of this night photography may represent an opposite pole for me.)

More Night Photography

G Dan Mitchell Photography | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | 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.

Photographs: Night, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Shacks and Ship Yard Structures

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Shacks and Ship Yard Structures
Shacks and Ship Yard Structures

Shacks and Ship Yard Structures. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, California. February 12, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Shacks, trestles, pipes and other shipyard structures against a night sky – Mare Island Naval Ship Yard.

Several years ago I shot more or less this scene and created a black and white photograph from it, and since then I’ve been thinking of trying to work with the scene again. I’ve been back, but ended up not shooting it for a variety of reasons, including a tall fence that now blocks the view a bit. On another occasion I decided not to shoot it since there was no moon… and the original photograph was done in full moon light. (“It wouldn’t look like my other photograph.” What a silly reason to not shoot it!)

This time I wandered over to this area to shoot a different subject, the companion structure that sits just north of this one. (Both support large overhead “tracks” along which some sort of machinery was able to lift and move large things like ship engines from the shop to the waterfront.) With my tripod cranked up to a foot or so above my head, the camera could “see” over the fence, so I decided to go ahead and shoot this subject again.

Technically, there are a few challenges in the shot. The bright light is very close to the first building and it ends up being very bright and the light is a very saturated yellow color – so that limits the maximum exposure. At the same time, there are some deeply shadowed areas in the structure that you can probably spot – come of the areas under parts of the tower for example. In addition, the city of Vallejo lies beyond this facility – you can see a bit of the glow from its lights in the distance – and some of the city lights would be directly visible if I wasn’t careful with camera placement.

I’m intrigued by several things about this subject. As a decommissioned ship yard, it is interesting to think about what it must have been like here in the past when all of this was in use. (Mare Island’s history goes well back into the 1800’s when it was the first west coast naval ship yard.) I also marvel at the “stuff” that I see that I can’t understand at all. I have no idea what many of those pipes were for or even what must have gone on in these little buildings. And the weathered, rusted, decaying character of the structure itself is interesting to me.

G Dan Mitchell Photography | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | 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.

Photographs: Night, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Urban/Street

Yellow Trestle and Night Sky

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Yellow Trestle and Night Sky
Yellow Trestle and Night Sky

Yellow Trestle and Night Sky. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, California. February 12, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Yellow trestle and night sky above historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard near Vallejo, California.

This trestle is one half of a pair of the structures that were apparently used for moving large parts of ships, perhaps including engines, from nearby work areas to the waterfront where ships were under construction at the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard. This area is no long in use (with the possible exception of some ship dismantling work) and the tall structures that tower over the area are gradually rusting and weathering.

The gaudy light comes from a combination of the yellow paint on the steel structures and the intensely colored sodium vapor lamps used to light the area. The glow in the sky comes from the town of Vallejo, just across the water from Mare Island. For this photograph I put the camera as I high as I could on the tripod so as to shoot over the top of a rather tall fence. (Yet another use for live view – I was able to compose and focus the image even though the camera was perhaps a foot above me.) I aimed the camera up to try to exclude a lot of the buildings and other structures that are found below these towers, since I wanted the simply diagonal of the trestle to be largely unobstructed. The star trails in the sky are the result of three minute exposure.

G Dan Mitchell Photography | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | 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.