Tag Archives: night

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

San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge, Dusk

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San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge, Dusk

San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge, Dusk. San Francisco, California. May 26, 2009. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Dusk over San Francisco Bay, the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge, Treasure Island, and urban areas along the San Francisco waterfront near AT&T Park.

I waited along the upper walkway of AT&T Park (through a couple innings!) to see this subdued dusk lighting as the lights come on along the cables of the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge.

Oh, yeah, the Giants won!

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

keywords: at&t, park, stadium, giants, baseball, ball, upper, deck, night, evening, dusk, sunset, urban, waterfront, the, embarcadero, lights, buildings, downtown, apartments, condominiums, san francisco, oakland, bay, bridge, span, west, treasure, yerba buena, island, sky, water, scenic, landscape, travel, stock, palm, tree

Commentary

New at Andy Frazer’s Night Photography Blog

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While I was looking the other direction, Andy Frazer posted a series of interesting pieces at his night photography blog, most of which point at the work of some very fine night photographers. Take a look!

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

Abandoned Building, Night

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Abandoned Building, Night

Abandoned Building, Night. Mare Island Naval Shipyard, California. March 8, 2009. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

An abandoned building photographed under artificial light at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Vallejo, California.

This is another photograph from the early March visit to historic Mare Island Naval Shipyard with The Nocturnes for a round of (almost) full moon night photography. I’m not actually sure what this building is or was. I just happened to look up a deserted alley while walking down Nimitz Avenue, and I saw  it lit up by lurid sodium vapor lighting. For that reason the colors of the original photograph are a bit much. I had to make some subjective decisions about how to best tone them down. The brightly lit area at the lower left of the building was almost blown out in the red channel from this wild light. I decided to keep a bit of the yellowish tone but reduce it to a more “normal” looking level.

This highlights one thing I enjoy about working with night photography images made in the presence of artificial light. The whole notion of “accurate” is fairly meaningless. First, you almost never make a final photograph that is as dark as the scene actually was – in truth, you cannot “see” a scene like this at night in the way a camera can. Once you realize this, concerns about coming up with  “accurate” color rendition seem sort of pointless – and I just use my judgment and work toward a rendition that seems right to me.

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

keywords: mare island, naval, shipyard, minsy, night, photography, nocturnes, vallejo, california, usa, abandoned, industrial, structure, building, window, door, perspective, sky, steps, ladder, wire, railing, distressed, old, architecture, artificial, light, urban, historic, shadow

Equipment, Technique

Canon EOS 5D Mark II: Live View and Night Photography

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I have shot a few thousand frames with my Canon EOS 5D Mark II now. I’ve photographed a variety of subjects including a few days of rainy professional bicycle stage racing, several landscape subjects, and a productive evening of night photography with The Nocturnes at Mare Island Naval Shipyard. I plan to eventually write up something resembling a comprehensive report on my experience, but so far there hasn’t been time. With that in mind, here is a short piece on one new feature in this camera and my experience with it.

Among the photographic subjects that interest me is night photography, often of urban and industrial subjects, but occasionally of wild landscapes also. There are a number challenges to shooting in very dark conditions, but one of the more interesting is getting good focus in conditions where auto-focus often can’t find a target to work with and where it is too dark to manually focus. (I wrote a bit about this in a recent piece: “Hints for Night Photography.”)

During my last Mare Island shoot I discovered that Live View provides a very useful option for focusing at night. On the 5D II, the Live View mode raises the mirror and lets you look at a “live view” of your scene on the rear LCD. In very dim light the trick is to find something that might provide a manual focus target, center the rectangular LCD indicator over that “something,” zoom in to 10x magnification on this object, and then focus manually on the LCD image. I was amazed at the low light levels at which this works quite well. A vertical line in a wall, the edge of a window, a bit of cyclone fence, or a small light – any of these become decent manual focus targets using Live View.

When I started my Mare Island evening shoot, using this camera for the first time at night, I mostly did things the old fashioned way. By the end of the evening, in any very dim situation I was successfully and much more quickly getting good focus using Live View. I’m confident that night photographers are going to find that this is a very powerful and useful feature.