Tag Archives: industrial

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Low Water, San Luis Reservoir

Leave a comment
Low Water, San Luis Reservoir
Low Water, San Luis Reservoir

Low Water, San Luis Reservoir. Central California. November 21, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Low water at the San Luis Reservoir, Autumn

California is currently in the third of three years of historically bad drought conditions. Water is power in the state — and a lot of politics has gone on around the acquisition of water, the use (and misuse) of water, and the construction of water projects. I’ve lived in the state long enough to have been in the valley now filled by this huge reservoir before it was filled. I have a faint memory of traveling across the valley bottom in a car with my dad at the wheel, looking at things that he told me were soon to be submerged — I have a specific recall of a bit of roadway and a bridge. That valley is long gone now, having been filled by the late 1960s.

The reservoir is an unusual one. The water it holds is pumped up into the reservoir from below and stored from year to year, producing some electrical power when the water flows back down from the reservoir to the valley. Essentially, water goes both directions though the dam! At the end of this third drought year the water level is extremely low — as low as I recall seeing it — and some of the huge structures at the dam are well above the water line. This is partly a photograph of those structures, partly a record of a phase in California’s water crisis, and partly a juxtaposition of angles and surfaces and curves, all under beautiful hazy late-autumn California light.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | 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.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Warehouse Wall

Leave a comment
Warehouse Wall
Warehouse Wall

Warehouse Wall. San Francisco, California. June 13, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Warehouse wall, door, and window on a San Francisco pier

Photographed on one of my morning walks around portions of downtown San Francisco, this is a scene from one of the piers along the San Francisco Bay waterfront. I had made a looping walk from the Caltrain station over around portions of China Basin, eventually making my way to the old waterfront area where I photograph dilapidated piers that are decaying and falling into the Bay. Finishing with that subject, I started back along the waterfront and soon came to the entrance to this very large and active pier, and I decided to wander out onto it since there was a marked pedestrian walkway.

The first section of the pier has a roadway up the center, and it is lined with warehouse structures with loading docks and garage doors. The scene is spare and industrial, and the light was coming across the structures from the side and highlighting details and textures. Here I like the disembodied shapes of the window and roll-up door.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | 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.

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

Building 237, Evening

Leave a comment
Building 237, Evening
Building 237, Evening

Building 237, Evening. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, Vallejo, California. April 5, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Evening light on Building 237 at the Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, Vallejo, California

This is one of a pair of buildings that has featured in several of my night photographs at the Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, where I’ve been photographing after dark for about a decade now. The location is the site of the former and now historic naval ship yard that was the first on the west coast of the United States, being established way back in the 1800s. It was decommissioned in the 1990s, and since that time the facility changed in many ways. Parts of the island are now open space, others have been turned into urban developments, businesses and others are using some of the old buildings and spaces—yet parts of the facility have been retained as a sort of informal historic site.

The buildings in the cluster of which this one is a part are very close to the “historic core” of the ship yard. Although many of the buildings give the appearance of being abandoned, some are in use and all are kept in a sort of state of suspended animation. Almost all of my photography here has been at night, when a diversity of light sources transform it in magical ways. During the day, much of it can seem quite mundane. Buildings that are wildly colorful when lit by brilliantly colorful sodium vapor lights and other colorful light sources often turn out to be quite drab in the day time. On this visit I managed to arrive before sunset, and I headed out to see if the golden hour light might offer some opportunities for a different sort of visual transformation of these buildings, and this one was photographed during the final few minute of daylight.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | 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.

Photographs: Night, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Industrial Building, Mixed Lighting

2 Comments
Industrial Building, Mixed Lighting
Industrial Building, Mixed Lighting

Industrial Building, Mixed Lighting. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, Vallejo, California. April 5, 2013. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Numerous sources of artificial light illuminate an industrial building from outside and inside

I like night photography for a number of reasons. I enjoy the very slow work, finding subjects and compositions in near darkness and then waiting patiently for long exposures to complete. “Normal” photography can be a slow and meditative process, but night photography must be. Given so much time to stand and wait, I cannot help but notice the stillness and quiet of the night, and to feel the cool and damp air. In fact, as a person who does night photography, these things are almost as much part of the experience as the visual elements.

In the visual context, there are a few things about the appeal of night photography that might not occur to a person who has not done it. When photographing in very low light, what we photograph is often very different from what we actually see. Often the subject is quite dark, even when lit by the moon or nearby lights, but the camera doesn’t care—a long enough exposure can collect more light that our eyes can, and a dim and drab subject can become bright. Also, the illusion that the camera stops time is not quite so strong when photographing at night. Over the course of a many minutes long exposure stars move, lights of cars appear and pass, clouds blur into soft streaks, and the edges of shadows from moonlight blur. In industrial areas such as this one, the lighting is a mixture of things glowing from within and lit from without, and the diversity of lighting—tungsten, fluorescent, sodium vapor, LED, mercury vapor, moonlight—paints the nightscape with wild colors. This building is an excellent example. The upper windows emanate a glow from yellow interior light. Relatively colorless light hits the upper walls, but the light takes on an odd blue/pink tone on the lower building, and the shadows head toward blue.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | 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.