Tag Archives: pipe

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

Power Plant Wall, Night

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Power Plant Wall, Night
Power Plant Wall, Night

Power Plant Wall, Night. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, Vallejo, California. April 16, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Night photograph of the exterior wall of the power plant at Mare Island Naval Ship Yard.

I have wandered past this building on many previous night photography sessions at Mare Island and have photographed quite a bit nearby, but this is the first time I have photographed it, at least from this perspective. (The iconic power plant smokestack above this building has been a subject of mine in the past.) The first thing that caught my interest about this building is that wonderful bundle of pipes that emerges near the upper left area and then heads off to who-knows-where in both directions. As I looked at the side of the building and imagined what it would look like in a long exposure under this artificial light, the rectangular shapes of the painted sections of the concrete wall seemed like they might also be interesting. And only after I made the photograph and looked at it in post did I realize that there was enough light in the scene – and perhaps inside the building – to faintly light some parts of the interior seen through the windows. The many shadows coming from different directions are produced by multiple overlapping light sources nearby.

To give you an idea of how dark it was on the scene, there was not enough light to focus. Usually I can get just enough by using the live view feature on my camera and finding an edge or a reflection somewhere that provides a line that has enough light, but not here. I finally ended up using one of the standard night photography tricks: I took a very small pocket LED light, walked over and set it against the wall, walked back to my camera to focus on this point of light, returned to the wall to retrieve the light, walked back to the camera and made my exposure.

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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: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Shacks and Ship Yard Structures

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Shacks and Ship Yard Structures
Shacks and Ship Yard Structures

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

Shacks, trestles, pipes and other shipyard structures against a night sky – Mare Island Naval Ship Yard.

Several years ago I shot more or less this scene and created a black and white photograph from it, and since then I’ve been thinking of trying to work with the scene again. I’ve been back, but ended up not shooting it for a variety of reasons, including a tall fence that now blocks the view a bit. On another occasion I decided not to shoot it since there was no moon… and the original photograph was done in full moon light. (“It wouldn’t look like my other photograph.” What a silly reason to not shoot it!)

This time I wandered over to this area to shoot a different subject, the companion structure that sits just north of this one. (Both support large overhead “tracks” along which some sort of machinery was able to lift and move large things like ship engines from the shop to the waterfront.) With my tripod cranked up to a foot or so above my head, the camera could “see” over the fence, so I decided to go ahead and shoot this subject again.

Technically, there are a few challenges in the shot. The bright light is very close to the first building and it ends up being very bright and the light is a very saturated yellow color – so that limits the maximum exposure. At the same time, there are some deeply shadowed areas in the structure that you can probably spot – come of the areas under parts of the tower for example. In addition, the city of Vallejo lies beyond this facility – you can see a bit of the glow from its lights in the distance – and some of the city lights would be directly visible if I wasn’t careful with camera placement.

I’m intrigued by several things about this subject. As a decommissioned ship yard, it is interesting to think about what it must have been like here in the past when all of this was in use. (Mare Island’s history goes well back into the 1800’s when it was the first west coast naval ship yard.) I also marvel at the “stuff” that I see that I can’t understand at all. I have no idea what many of those pipes were for or even what must have gone on in these little buildings. And the weathered, rusted, decaying character of the structure itself is interesting to me.

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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.

G Dan Mitchell Photography | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | 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.