Tag Archives: metal

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

Building 106, Night

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Building 106, Night
“Building 106, Night” — Black and white night photograph of Building 106 and surroundings, Mare Island Naval Ship Yard

It has been a while since I have posted new night photography, much less work from this location. I’ve photograph this area extensively over a period of years, often working with my friends from The Nocturnes, the San Francisco Bay Area night photography group. In fact, I was there with them once again on this mid-March night.

Atypically, some of us had begun the evening’s work by shooting in the daylight! Shortly before sunset someone came up with the novel idea, among night photographers anyway, of going out before it became dark to photograph in the golden hour light. So, I started early and gradually worked my way back to the familiar central core of old ship yard buildings. Some years ago when I first visited I was entranced by the most obvious subjects, mostly very large and impressive industrial structures. I still find them impressive and continue to photograph them, but as I returned many more times I began to push out the boundaries of what I know of the place. Eventually I looked for less obvious subjects, sometimes small and out-of-the-way things I had first overlooked, and I began to move beyond the familiar core area to look a bit more far afield. While the location in this photograph isn’t that far from where I started shooting, it is a bit less visited and it was probably the first time that I had explored this particular spot. I was first attracted by some nearby tall structures that look like they might be some sort of hoppers or collection equipment. Then I continued walking and turned up this side alley where nearby artificial lights illuminated the terribly weathered metal walls of old factory buildings, rising from the small one at right, past the taller building just beyond, and culminating that the much taller building near the upper portion of the frame, with its large pipe that must have carried smoke or gas away from its room.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him.

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Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Window and Rusted Chimney

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Window and Rusted Chimney
“Window and Rusted Chimney”Detail of the outside wall of a dilapidated wooden building with a window and a rusted metal chimney, China Camp, California

During the first weekend of 2013 I joined a bunch of Bay Area photographers who were taking part in a “long exposure photo walk,” shooting with this group at dawn near the Golden Gate Bridge and then later in the morning at this historic location. China Camp was, as I understand it, a shrimp fishing village established on the shoreline of the northern San Francisco Bay in the 1800s by immigrants from China. It has long since been abandoned and now is part of a California state park. It seems mostly like a place of quiet and solitude these days, and the most common sounds during my visit were the cries of shore birds.

A few buildings, some apparently reconstructed or restored, remain from the original village. They sit right along the shoreline in a shallow cove with an open view across the northern bay. I had beautiful soft light on this visit, as a Pacific winter storm was just beginning to clear, leaving it its wake plenty of atmospheric moisture and cloudiness. I photographed the very weathered side of this building as that light vacillated between cloudy gray and nearly full sun, catching this shot as some sun shone through, though softened a bit by the clouds.

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G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others.

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

Stairway and Broken Windows

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Stairway and Broken Windows
Stairway and Broken Windows

Stairway and Broken Windows. Near Vallejo, California. March 16, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Exterior staircase, broken windows, and peeling paint on the wooden side panels of an abandoned building near Vallejo, California

I had joined up with a group of night photographers that I often shoot with on this evening, and we were sitting around in the late afternoon hours sharing pizza when someone made the radical suggestion of going out to shoot before darkness arrived! In the past, this has been just about the only group of photographers I’ve ever met who would stay inside during a San Francisco Bay area golden hour and sunset period, anxious for the light to go away so that shooting could begin! But on this evening, the radical concept of shooting in the daylight must have seemed so innovative that quite a few of us headed out to find either landscape-style shots over the San Francisco Bay or else abandoned and dilapidated industrial subjects nearby. I opted for the latter, and hoping to cover a bit more ground before dark, rather than walking nearby I drove, trying to figure out where I wanted to be in the fading light.

I ended up near this lonely, abandoned and partially destroyed building that has been left to vandals, who seem to be doing their best to accelerate the natural destructive forces that eventually take such buildings. Many windows are broken, there is spray paint in many places, and the exterior of the building is tremendously weathered and worn. Just a few minutes before sunset I made a series of exposures of this building, using a long lens to isolate smaller sections of the building. The sunset light turned the otherwise-dull building a much more intense shade of brown/yellow, and the brighter sky and clouds over San Francisco Bay are reflected in the broken windows. Soon after I finished shooting, the sun set, and I headed back to where my nocturnal friends awaited, and we headed out to photograph in the night.

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.
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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

Moonlit Stairs and Windows

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Moonlit Stairs and Windows - Metal staircase and wood framed windows on an old building at the Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, photographed under the light of the full moon.
Metal staircase and wood framed windows on an old building at the Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, photographed under the light of the full moon.

Moonlit Stairs and Windows. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, California. April 16, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Metal staircase and wood framed windows on an old building at the Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, photographed under the light of the full moon.

This month I have had the opportunity to return to the ongoing task for filing through older raw files to see what I missed the first time around. (The task also leads to deleting some files that I originally held on to.) For me this is an important ritual, as I often accidentally “leave behind” some photographs when I first review them – either I get to busy and move on before I fully explore them, or in some cases I simply don’t yet “see” the photograph when I look at it too soon after making it. I have a theory about the latter issue. Sometimes I think I’m so invested in what I hoped or thought the photograph would be that I fail to see what it really is, at least until I’ve waited a while.

The subject of this photograph is the exterior of a building at the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard in Vallejo, a place that I have photographed only in the dark! I have worked with this building before. It is superficially a pretty uninteresting structure, but some of the unusual exterior stairways become interesting compositionally when illuminated by moonlight as in this photograph. I’ll share a few odd technical details about this one, too. The exposure time was nearly 8 minutes! And the capture was still underexposed. Since I cannot meter a scene like this, I often make my first exposure based on some sort of educated hunch – and I guess I just couldn’t imagine that I’d have to stand there any longer than this! Of course, because of the distance between the close-in railing and the far portions of the upper story, I had to use a small aperture of f/16. And being concerned about noise I shot at ISO 200. In the dark. Right. So one reason that I think I neglected to work with this file was that it seemed underexposed – OK, it was underexposed, even given the very dark subject of the scene. However, when I began to work with the raw file I discovered that I could push it the equivalent of several stops and the image would still hold good quality without obtrusive noise. I like the odd combination of shapes and angles, and in the end I think the very dark interpretation is actually the right one for this subject.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer 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.