Tag Archives: night

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

Abandoned Loading Dock

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Abandoned Loading Dock
Railroad tracks and a weather protection structure above an old loading dock, Mare Island Naval Ship Yard

Abandoned Loading Dock. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, Vallejo, California. March 11, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Railroad tracks and a weather protection structure above an old loading dock, Mare Island Naval Ship Yard

This is another very still and quiet image from my recent evening photographing the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard. Image walking alone in the darkness among these old (mostly) abandoned ship yard buildings: shops, warehouses, towers. Occasionally a lone car drives past, momentarily raising my level of alertness. It is mostly silent except for a sound of distant traffic across the water in Vallejo. The air is typically cold and damp, and on this night a bit of a breeze blows. The photographs are visual images, but they also evoke, for me, a whole series of associations, memories, and sensations associated with the place the experience of making the photographs.

There is always a question of just how to treat luminosity and color with these nighttime subjects. The fact of the matter is that many of these scenes are barely visible to the human eye, and details are shrouded in darkness. In this low light color is mostly desaturated, only becoming visible afterwards in the photograph. And much of the color is not the true color of the objects, but rather is the color of the light that illuminates them — and it can range from yellow to reddish, but white or even blue-green. The concept of accurate rendering becomes moot, since an “accurate” photograph (if “accurate” means “what it looked like”) would be almost colorless and nearly pitch black. Instead I take this as an opportunity to capture “what the camera sees” and use that as the raw material for what must be an interpretation of the captured light — almost inevitably brighter and more colorful than the original, but still trying to evoke that mysterious and quiet nocturnal quality.

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” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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Photographs: Night, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Support Columns, Purple and Green Wall

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Support Columns, Purple and Green Wall
Support Columns, Purple and Green Wall

Support Columns, Purple and Green Wall. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, Vallejo, California. March 11, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Night photograph of dilapidated building in green and purple, Mare Island Naval Ship Yard.

In contrast to the huge and somewhat garishly lit iconic towers and cranes of Mare Island, there are innumerable little quiet and hidden subjects to photograph. I think that most of us start with the obvious subjects and eventually, after shooting them many times, begin to look for these other possibilities. I photographed this in very low light, complicated by a bit of wind, and I could barely see the subject as I worked. (In order to focus I had to shine a small light on the edge of part of the structure.)

The colors were almost a bit of a surprise. At Mare Island there (or, in too many cases used to be, now that the lighting has been “modernized”) a wild variation in lighting types. There is often the moonlight. A glow comes across the water from Vallejo. Sodium vapor lamps can produce a sort of sickly yellow color. Tungsten light is warm colored, and fluorescent light can be very strange. As a consequence, the colors of this nighttime world are more about the colors of the lighting than the colors of the subjects themselves. The side of this building, which is probably quite drab in daylight, picked up subtle green and purple tones under the artificial light.

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” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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

D4 — Do It Safe

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D4 — Do It Safe
Two shipyard cranes, Mare Island Naval Ship Yard

D4 — Do It Safe. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, Vallejo, California. March 11, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Two shipyard cranes, Mare Island Naval Ship Yard

This past weekend I joined my friends from The Nocturnes, the San Francisco Bay Area night photography group for a night photographing at the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard. (Despite the similar names, this is a different group than Studio Nocturne SF, a group of photographers with whom I exhibit.) The location is a bit of a Mecca for night photography around here, and I’ve been photographing in this place for something like a dozen years, virtually always at night.

On this shoot I focused on a combination of some less obvious things that I’ve learned to see over many years of working this subject and some of the classic, iconic subjects at Mare Island. This photograph is in the latter category. These huge cranes, set on a system of tracks surrounding dry docks, are perhaps the most characteristic visual feature of Mare Island, especially since they tower high above the old historic buildings. My night photographs of this subject don’t exactly strive for an accurate image. To be honest, that would be an incredibly boring thing, since there is so little light that the subject is often barely visible on the scene. So my idea is to focus on “what the camera sees,” and I typically make very long exposures that collect enough of that faint light to make the subject more clearly visible.

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” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Italy, Photographs: Night, Photographs: Urban/Street

Fishing Lab, Night

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Fishing Lab, Night
Employees take a break outside and customers enter the Fishing Lab, Florence

Fishing Lab, Night. Florence/Firenze, Italy. August 28, 2016. © Copyright 2016 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Employees take a break outside and customers enter the Fishing Lab, Florence

If you have noticed an abundance of night photography in my posts this week, there is a reason. Today is the opening for the “Nocturnes & Noir” exhibit at the Harvey Milk Photo Center in San Francisco, a juried exhibit of night photography that includes a few of my photographs. If you are in The City, come and join us at the opening reception at 5:30-8:00PM at the Center, 50 Scott Street, in San Francisco.

I made this photograph in Florence, Italy on a lovely evening last summer, our final one in that city. We passed this restaurant while walking back to our hotel, which was very close to this spot, and the scene caught my attention on a number of levels. It is full of contrasts: between the patrons in the brightly lit doorway and the employees taking a break in the alley lit by streetlights, between the brown-pink tones of the front wall of the restaurant on the right and the green tones on the left. There’s more, but I’ll leave it to you to ponder! By the way, even though the restaurant intrigued me and even though we were staying right up the street, we never stopped to eat there. If I recall, someone suggested that it might have been a bit too familiar of an experience from Americans used to eating in big American cities, and we were more interested in trying to experience something more Italian. This morning I took a look at their website and read a bit more… and now it sounds kind of interesting!

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” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | LinkedIn | Email

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.