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

Powerplant, Railroad Avenue – Mare Island Naval Shipyard

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Powerplant, Railroad Avenue - Mare Island Naval Shipyard
Powerplant, Railroad Avenue - Mare Island Naval Shipyard

Powerplant, Railroad Avenue – Mare Island Naval Shipyard. Mare Island, Vallejo, California. February 27, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Night panoramic photograph of the powerplant building and other structures along Railroad Avenue at the historic Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Vallejo, California.

This is a bit of a first for me – a night photography stitched panorama. This image is composed of two separate exposures which were aligned and “stitched” into a single image in post. (As such, it could be a very large print!) Shooting from an elevated position, I shot almost directly north (as you can tell from the star trails in the larger version). The view looks up Railroad Avenue past the iconic power plant building with its smokestack that is visible from all over Mare Island.

I’m usually a bit casual about exposure time with long exposure night photographs. It isn’t that I don’t care – it is just that one has a ton of leeway when it comes to the very long exposures I typically use. For example, on a 3 minute exposure you would have to be off by three minutes to overexpose by one stop! So rather than use a stopwatch or an automatic timer I just count to myself. I’m usually will within a 10% error, and that is good enough. However, when stitching “good enough” often isn’t. The separate component frames really need to be quite similar, so in this case I resorted to using my watch to get relatively accurate 90 second exposures.

Another interesting factor in night photography is illustrated in this photo, namely the wildly varied colors of the light sources we deal with. There are three dominant sources in this image. The overall illumination comes from the full moon, which is quite similar to day light in terms of white balance. On the near wall of the brick power plant there is very “hot” and saturated yellow/red tinted light, probably from sodium vapor lamps. Near the left end of the image is an old wooden building that is illuminated by very green light, which I believe comes from mercury vapor lamps. I often chuckle a bit when people speak of “white balancing” the color in a scene like this. If you pick one source for your white balance you’ll throw the others even more out of line. My philosophy is usually to just go with what looks right!

Finally, the idea of making the stitched panorama came from the recently started Panocturnists web site, begun by people connected with The Nocturnes, the San Francisco Bay Area night photography group. I was intrigued by the idea of creating panoramic night photography, and I’ve done a few images along these lines on my two most recent visits to Mare Island.

(More of my Mare Island photographs)

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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Technical Data:
Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM
ISO 200, f/8, 90 seconds

keywords: powerplant, building, structure, railroad, avenue, street, track, asphalt, sky, dark, night, photography, star, trail, color, light, yellow, red, blue, smoke, stack, cyclone, fence, brick, glow, panorama, panocturnes, minsy, san francisco bay area, window, antenna, vallejo, california, usa, north america, mare, island, naval, shipyard, stock

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

Nimitz Avenue, Tower and Buildings

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Nimitz Avenue, Tower and Buildings
Nimitz Avenue, Tower and Buildings

Nimitz Avenue, Tower and Buildings. Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Vallejo, California. February 6, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Tower, buildings, and power plant smokestack along Nimitz Avenue, Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Vallejo, California.

One more, and perhaps the last, in the current series of Mare Island night photographs made with The Nocturnes during the first weekend of February. This scene is one that is well-known to Mare Island night photographers – a row of industrial buildings in the “historic core” of the old shipbuilding facility where huge overhead steel structures run between the machine shops and the old docks. In this photograph I decided to more or less shoot through the base of one of these giant towers. The scene is illuminated by bright and colorful artificial light and the photograph required an exposure of about a minute and a half. (I cheated and shot the 5D2 at ISO 200.) Though they may be hard to see in the small jpg, some star trails are visible in the sky near the smokestack of the old power plant.

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.

G Dan Mitchell Photography | Twitter | Friendfeed | Facebook | Facebook Fan Page | Email

keywords: mare, island, naval, ship, yard, historic, vallejo, california, usa, nocturnes, night, photography, structures, nimitz, avenue, street, railroad, track, puddle, water, reflection, tower, steel, yellow, ladder, industrial, rust, core, brick, wall, window, door, roof, asphalt, north america, sky, star, trails, cyclone, fence, smokestack, power, plant, stock

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

Building 631, Mare Island

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Building 631, Mare Island
Building 631, Mare Island

Building 631, Mare Island. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, Vallejo, California. February 6, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Building 631, with badly peeling paint and illuminated by garish artificial lighting, Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, Vallejo, California.

For some reason I often find myself down around the old power plant and in the alley next to Building 631 near the end of my nighttime shoots at Mare Island. The railroad tracks curve through this alley – though they aren’t particularly visible in this photograph – and the bizarre and garish light and grossly peeling paint on this wall seem different from many of the other subjects around here.

One of the fun things about this sort of night photography is that “white balance” is more or less impossible! This scene includes light sources ranging from some kind of bizarre blue-green lighting that I can’t identify (fluorescent?) to sodium vapor to tungsten to sky lit by the glow from Vallejo, across the bay from the island. When it comes to the right color balance… pick one! Or several! Or make one up! In the end, no matter what you choose it won’t really “look like” what you saw in the dead of night – but for me that isn’t really the object. Long-exposure night photography lets us reveal things that we cannot see with our own eyes and present them in ways that are imaginative and different from our usual reality.

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.

G Dan Mitchell Photography | Twitter | Friendfeed | Facebook | Facebook Fan Page | Email

keywords: mare, island, naval, ship, yard, historic, vallejo, california, usa, nocturnes, night, photography, structures, building, 631, peeling, paint, wall, door, light, lamp, garish, artificial, window, road, track, sky, plants, old, abandoned, industrial, north america, conduit, boarded up, downspout, no parking, wire, perspective, convergence, stock

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

Eighth and Nimitz, Towers and Wall

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Eighth and Nimitz, Towers and Wall
Eighth and Nimitz, Towers and Wall

Eighth and Nimitz, Towers and Wall. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, Vallejo, California. February 6, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Towers and brick wall at the corner of Eight and Nimitz, Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, Vallejo, California.

One more take on the corner of Nimitz Avenue and Eighth Street in the “historic core” of the Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, as photographed after dark on my recent visit with The Nocturnes, the SF Bay Area night photography group. (Visit their web site for lots of great night photography resources.)

I thought I’d post this photograph as an example of several things that I think about a lot as I make photographs and post them at my blog and elsewhere on the web. Here goes:

  • While I post a number of photographs that I am very happy with, I also post quite a few that are part of the learning and development process. In fact, posting daily is part of my dedication to practice, an idea that I learned from many years in music. Daily work with images – whether making photographs or working on photographs already made or thinking about how I might photograph subjects I encounter or looking at the photographs of others – sharpens my visual acuity and improves my ability to “see” photographs in subjects I encounter. This is one of those not-quite-right photographs that I learn from.
  • There is much that I like in this photograph, but there is also a significant compositional issue that I recognized as soon as I looked at it on the computer. See it yet? I’ll wait…
  • With a moment to look more closely you probably noticed some issues with the placement of the nearest steel beam on the right side of the frame. It almost, but not quite, covers one of the window frames in the brick wall in the background, but unfortunately a bit of that frame sticks out beyond the left side of the beam. In addition, and related to that, the right side of this beam partially blocks the upper right edge of one of the windows.
  • Of course, now that I’m sitting at my computer in a warm and well-lit room, I can easily see how I could have solved this problem when I made the exposure – most likely by moving a bit to the right and perhaps slightly forward. With that in mind, I’ve filed two things in the “photographic memory bank.” First, the next time I shoot this scene I’ll probably resolve this issue! Second, I’ve added one more data point to the experience that I draw on when I make a shot, and this increases the chances that I won’t miss things like this quite so often in the future.

Live and learn! :-)

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.

G Dan Mitchell Photography | Twitter | Friendfeed | Facebook | Facebook Fan Page | Email

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