A sidewalk with a lamp next to a white waterfront building in San Francisco, California.
This is another in the series of wandering-the-streets photographs from San Francisco last July. At one point I was wandering along the Embarcadero – the road and nearby areas that front the shoreline along the Bay between about Fishermans Wharf and ATT Park. I walked through here slowly, poking about in odd little alleys and walkways, and occasionally finding myself in spots that were not very crowded. Here I had walked into an area of new construction to find new and refurbished buildings over the water and surrounded by walkways. At just this point the fog clouds were beginning to thin out a bit – you can see a hint of blue sky reflected in the upper windows and shadows were starting to appear. Certain shape, color, and texture features drew me to this little scene.
The light of the full moon illuminates fast-moving fog clouds above Mare Island Naval Ship Yard structures lit by artificial lighting.
Since I haven’t posted photographs of these structures for a while, I’ll share a bit of explanation. The location is the Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, across the water from Vallejo, California. Mare Island is a decommissioned ship yard whose history goes way back into the 1800s, when it was the largest naval ship yard on the west coast. There is a ton of history to the place that I only know vaguely, but it was, among other place, the ship yard where a number of nuclear submarines were produced. (That and certain other dangerous residues are also part of the legacy of the place, unfortunately.) The ship yard has not been active since the 1990s, with the exception of some current work to dismantle a ship from the “ghost fleet” parked near the Carquinez Bridge.
The very old buildings and the remnants of some quite large industrial facilities draw night photographers from around the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. (On my recent visit there were three groups photographing the place, including one from Sacramento.) There are almost endless subjects for night photography, ranging from very old to very new buildings, interesting structures like those in this photograph, old residences, and the general clutter found in any industrial area. All of it is lit by a varied array of lights including just about anything you can imagine: the full moon, light from nearby Vallejo, neon, fluorescent, tungsten, sodium vapor and probably other types of light.
In this photograph, huge overhead structures are lit by garish artificial light, while the overhead clouds are lit by the full moon. If I understand correctly, the structures supported huge cranes on tracks, and were used to move very heavy materials to the waterfront for installation in ships. They haven’t been used in a long time, and they are deteriorating in a way that is fascinating to photographers!
The light of the full moon illuminates the facade of a wooden building, and outside stairway, and passing overhead fog clouds at Mare Island Naval Ship Yard.
Since I was out doing night photography this weekend, I’m going to use this as an excuse to insert a night image into the recent stream of Death Valley photographs. (There are more of those, but a bit of variety can’t hurt.) I got an email from Tim Baskerville, the guiding light (guiding dark?) of The Nocturnes, the San Francisco Bay Area night photography group. Tim has introduced and guided many new night photographers over the past few decades, and The Nocturnes group is a sort of loose collective linking together lots of night photographers and providing instruction, online resources, and shows of night photography work. As this is the 20th year for the group, lots of special activities are taking place and this little spontaneous get-together at Mare Island was one of them.
A small story from this weekend’s shoot may illustrate the widespread effect of Tim’s work with night photography in general and with the Mare Island location specifically. Those of us who were to meet Tim at Mare Island arrived to find other photographers already assembled at the indicated meeting place – but we didn’t really recognize most of the group. It turns out that another night photography group (loosely organized, as I understand it, by Thomas Hawk and Ivan Makarov) was going to be there as well. We spoke with them a bit and then they departed for the far end of the island. (They returned later and we worked side by side.) But then, a few minutes later, more vehicles began to show up and we thought that they might be the rest of our group, especially when someone asked “Are you the Nocturnes?” But no, this was a third night photography group, this one out of Sacramento!
In any case, as the light diminished and night came on we started shooting. We had a nearly full moon, which can be a wonderful asset, not so much as a subject (it is very difficult to include the full moon in night shots) but for the beautiful light is sheds on other subjects that might otherwise be very dark. On top of that, we had a combination of some high clouds (which are relatively stationary) and low fog (which creates a nice luminous glow as it quickly passes). I decided to begin the evening’s work by photographing this wooden-sided building and its outside staircase, illuminated by the moonlight, and with a bit of the cloudy sky and faint star trails.
Curved windows, balconies, and railings of the Portside building on the Embarcadero, San Francisco.
This photograph of the Portside Building focuses on the curving upper structure of rounded windows, balconies, and railings. This intriguing building is located near the Embarcadero, almost directly beneath the west end of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in San Francisco.
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.
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
Manage Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
