Tag Archives: night

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

Turnstile Shadows

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Turnstile Shadows
Turnstile Shadows

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

Shadows cast by sodium vapor lamps shining on old turnstiles at Mare Island Naval Ship Yard.

This old row of abandoned turnstiles stands at the entrance to an alley through which we almost always walk as we begin shooting in the core area of the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard near Vallejo, California. It seems odd to see the structure here since now one can just walk around them, but I suspect that this area must have been somewhat secure at times since military ships were built here.

This isn’t an easy subject to photograph. Several of us were talking about how we have struggled to find a composition built around the turnstiles. I have one other photograph that I made a few years ago that I think works pretty well. In that one I aimed a bit higher and let the metal structure pretty much fill the frame, and I also ended up making it a black and white image. (It was used as a cover for a book at one point.) But on this evening a few of us were staring at the turnstiles again and remarking that there must be more photographs in there… somewhere… but that we are still trying to find them.

I thought it might be interesting to make the long and complex patterns of the shadows fill most of the frame, so I moved back just a little and pointed the camera down so that just a portion of the turnstile structure appears at the top of the frame. This also helps with a couple of technical challenges: the bright lights beyond the structure create a tremendously large dynamic range in the scene, and it can be difficult to keep some distracting background elements (like a stop sign!) out of the image. The garish yellow/orange light is from a large sodium vapor lamp that sits above the intersection on the road in the background. That coloration is part of what made me choose to make the previous photograph of this subject black and white, but on this night I decided to go with the color.

The final image is a blend of two exposures. The shorter one was selected to avoid blowing out the brightest areas in the upper part of the frame, and the longer one let me keep a bit more detail in the shadowed asphalt foreground.

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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, Photographs: Urban/Street

Lamp, the ‘UFO Building” at Night

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Lamp, the 'UFO Building" at Night
Lamp, the 'UFO Building" at Night

Lamp, the ‘UFO Building” at Night. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, California. February 12, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A lamp casts a shadow in bright artificial light in a night photograph of the wall of the ‘UFO Building’ at Mare Island Naval Shipyard.

The first time I photographed the side of this weathered and peeling building and Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, I didn’t see the feature that gives this building its informal name. I’ll be that you can though, right? Due to a lucky alignment of this small exterior lamp (which appears to be non-functional) and some nearby sodium vapor lamps, the lamp casts a shadow on the corrugated wall of the building that has a striking and easily recognized shape!

It may not immediately be apparent that this photograph was made at night in very low light. However, a look at the lighting should make it apparent that this cannot be daytime light. Note that the lamp that creates a shadow to its right… is also getting some nice illumination from the right side! One of the fun things about shooting in an industrial location like Mare Island is the amazing mixture of lighting sources. Though it wasn’t much of an influence on this night, the full moon can provide light that is color balanced pretty much like daylight… only a lot dimmer. The sodium vapor lamps that light this area (they are common in street lamps) produce a strongly yellow or yellow/red light. Occasional fluorescent or tungsten lamps provide yet more color variations. In the end, it is just about impossible to say what kind of color balance is “real” – and doubly-so since the actual shooting conditions are near darkness. The only reason that images like this look daylight-bright is because they are typically the result of long exposures. In fact, this one was relatively short at just over a minute. Somewhere in the 2 to 5 minute range is perhaps more typical.

The crazy lighting is apparent in this image if you look a bit more closely. As mentioned above, there is cross lighting here from both sides of the frame. While the strongest light comes from the left (and creates that UFO shadow) there is also significant light from a bit further away to the right. You may also be able to see that the in some areas the shadows created by light from one side are filled in by garishly colored lights coming from the other directions – see some of the very yellow areas along the sides of vertical boards and along the ridges of the corrugated wall.

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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, Photographs: Urban/Street

Pipes, Tank, and Cyclone Fence Shadows

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Pipes, Tank, and Cyclone Fence Shadows
Pipes, Tank, and Cyclone Fence Shadows

Pipes, Tank, and Cyclone Fence Shadows. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, California. February 12, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Black and white night photorgraph of pipes, a tank, and cyclone fence shadows falling across a brick wall at the Mare Island Naval Ship Yard.

This past weekend I had a chance to join my friends from The Nocturnes for an introduction to night photography at the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard near Vallejo, California. The Nocturnes schedule events at this wonderful and rich location several times each year, and I have done night photography there many times in the past. Many of the photographers at this particular event were experimenting with “the dark side” for the first time, so I decided to go both to do a bit of my own shooting and to help Tim Baskerville answer questions from some of the first-timers.

This bit of industrial “stuff” is in a location I have shot many, many times. It is in an alley next to what is now the Mare Island Historic Museum, and it traditionally the first place that many MINSY night photographers start their evening of night photography. Since I’ve shot quite a few of the standard subjects at Mare Island, I had in mind a few slightly different subjects and different approaches in mind this time. One was to focus specifically on shadows as a compositional element and another was to look for some of the smaller details of the place in addition to shooting the very interesting larger structures that so often get my attention.

So, after shooting nearby structure with shadows angling across the alley, I thought that I’d see what I could do with this odd bit of old pipes and a tank against a brick wall, and illuminated by nearby sodium vapor lamps shining through a cyclone fence. I liked the shiny texture of the pipes and their shapes as they radiated from the central tank, along with the shapes of both the very dark and large shadows and the net of fainter shadows thrown over the whole scene by the fence.

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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: New York City, Photographs: Night, Photographs: People, Photographs: Urban/Street

Ice Cream Man in His Truck, New York City

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Ice Cream Man in His Truck, New York City
Ice Cream Man in His Truck, New York City

Ice Cream Man in His Truck, New York City. New York, New York. August 19, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A mobile ice-cream vendor parked in his truck at night near Madison Square Garden on 7th Avenue in New York City.

The street vendors are certainly a part of the glorious sensory assault that is Manhattan, at least for this California visitor. They are everywhere, and they range from the generic hotdog/pretzel vendors, through folks who look like they bought a few cases of water and decided to sell them, to some that seem almost gourmet. Two small stories… I didn’t make a photograph, but when we were in lower Manhattan in the financial district we saw a line-up of perhaps a dozen mobile food carts around one small square selling a wide range of foods. While the lines at most of them included a person or two… one stand had a line stretching all the way across the square. Second story – which I’ll tell on myself: One morning we wanted to grab a pretzel. In the process I quickly forgot one of the first rules of buying from these guys, namely settle the price before getting the food. A NYC pretzel ought to cost perhaps a couple bucks, but I managed to double the price by asking for the “goods” first, taking them from the vendor, and only then asking for the price. Let’s just say he gave me the “tourist special price,” and I didn’t feel like enough of a jerk to hand them back to him over the price. :-)

This truck was parked at a corner on 7th Avenue almost across the street from Madison Square Garden, and seemed to be doing a good business during the twilight hour on this evening.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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