Folded and twisted rock forms in Mosaic Canyon, Death Valley National Park, California.
Although this formation is found very near the entrance to the canyon, on this visit I also managed to wander further up the canyon than I have in the past, discovering very different and far more open terrain that what I had seen before. Mosaic Canyon, a short drive up the hill from Stovepipe Wells, is known for its very narrow and twisty lower section, its access to higher regions of the Mount Tucki area, and the striking and unusual rock formations laid bare by erosion from water traveling down the canyon in past floods.
In the lower canyon there is a section where this beautifully banded rock runs alongside the trail. Sometimes that patterns are a bit hard to see, but this time it appeared that recent rains and the soft afternoon shaded light brought them out a bit more. This section featured ribbon-like folds in the surface of the rock that must have been created by water erosion.
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.
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.
Industrial towers and brick building under the light of the full moon at Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Vallejo, California.
On February 27, for the second time this month, I visited Mare Island Naval Shipyard to do night photography with The Nocturnes, the San Francisco Bay Area night photography group. (Anyone looking for great resources on night photography should visit their web site. They also offer classes and workshops on night photography.) This was a “Mare Islands Alumni” event, attended by quite a few folks who have done night photography at Mare Island. One of the highlights came before the actual photography began as we met in the museum building and had a chance to view work by participating photographers – the work gets better every time and there was some wonderful night photography on display.
One attraction on this night was the full moon, which appears just above and to the right of the frame in this photograph made near the intersection of 8th and Nimitz Streets, in the heart of the old ship construction area. The was the first subject I photographed – it was something of a “do over,” since I had overlooked some obvious composition problems with the shot earlier this month and wanted to get it right this time. When I originally mentioned that, Tim Baskerville pointed out that I might have a hard time getting the same reflective puddles in the scene, but as luck would have it a good sized storm was just departing and it left great puddles everywhere!
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.
Night photography of brick and concrete buildings under artificial lighting with star trails at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Vallejo, California.
The Mare Island night photography well has still not quite run dry – so here is one more from my February 6 shoot there with The Nocturnes. I spent a fair amount of time poking around the spaces near this brilliantly lit concrete building and the darker brick building beyond, photographing the two buildings from various angles and directions. The contrast between the artificially lit plain concrete walls of the foreground building and the darker and more textured brick walls of the further building was striking, and I’ve been intrigued for some time by the reflections and glow of the windows up high on the roof. This exposure was long enough that the high clouds moved and created the linear blurred shapes you see in the sky, interspersed with subtle but numerous star trails.
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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Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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