Tag Archives: trails

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Night, Photographs: Southern California

Star Trails, The Manifold, Zabriskie Point

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Star Trails, The Manifold, Zabriskie Point
The Manifold, Star Trails – Zabriskie Point

Star Trails, The Manifold, Zabriskie Point. Death Valley National Park, California. March 29, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Star trails above the Manifold, Zabriskie Point, Death Valley National Park, California.

One of my goals on my late-March trip to Death Valley was to do some night photography, in particular to take advantage of the nearly full moon near the end of my visit. Some of my plans did not quite work out – for example, on the night when I intended to do night photography of the moving rocks at the Racetrack Playa it was cloudy all night! However, on the final night of my visit the weather gods cooperated and I was able to make a few exposures from Zabriskie Point as the moon rose. As if to partially make up for messing up the intended Racetrack shots, the “cloud gods” were kind enough to provide me with a few high thin clouds at Zabriskie. This was one of those wonderful occasions when things actually did go as planned!

Anticipating the full moon at Zabriskie, I made a point of camping in the vicinity of Furnace Creek at the Texas Springs campground. (I expect that my habits mystified a few nearby campers. I drove in at about 2:00 p.m., grabbed a site and “marked” it by leaving a chair and a tarp, and almost immediately left – not returning until nearly 10:00 p.m. Then I was up and gone well before sunrise.) In any case, I headed down to the Badwater area in the late afternoon to photograph sunset light on the salt flats and evening clouds – following an impromptu “dinner” at the back of my car at the Badwater parking lot. It was getting fairly dark by the time I finished up at Badwater, so I headed straight up to Zabriskie. By the time I arrived the moon was just coming up over the mountain range to the east, with its light at times filtering through high clouds. During the hour I was there I made three exposures. With exposure times in the 8 to 12 minute range and followed by “dark frame exposures” of equal length, this was a slow and quiet process.

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 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM
ISO 200, f/8, 787 seconds (not a typo!)

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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.

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

Nimitz Street, High Fog, Night

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Nimitz Street, High Fog, Night

Nimitz Street, High Fog, Night. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, Vallejo, California. August 30, 2009. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Nimitz Street with high fog and moonlight and ambient artificial lighting, Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Vallejo, California.

This is probably one of the iconic scenes for night photographers at the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard near Vallejo, California. This shot looks up Nimitz Street near the waterfront and across railway tracks toward some of the core old buildings and beyond to the smoke stack of the power plant. It includes some of the huge overhead structures that were, as I understand it, used to move large ship components such as engines from the shops in which they were assembled to the ships under construction.

As is typical at night at Mare Island, the photograph includes a wild range of types of lighting. The 3/4 moon is partially responsible for illuminating the high fog, but the fog also picks up a warmer glow from a variety of types of lighting on the ground at Mare Island and beyond. The buildings are lit by some of the same light sources, but also by local security lightning and some street lights including tungsten, sodium vapor and perhaps even florescent sources. (When composing such shots I have to be very careful to place the camera in a position where direct light from these many sources is blocked by buildings, towers, and so forth.)

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.

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

Shipyard Structure and Star Trails

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Scaffold and Star Trails

Shipyard Structure and Star Trails. Mare Island Naval Shipyard, California. February 7, 2009. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Shipyard scaffolding illuminated by artificial light and moonlight with star trails – Mare Island Naval Shipyard, California.

One more night photograph from Mare Island, this one being the last frame I exposed before my shutter went to shutter heaven. (Well, actually it went to the Canon Factory Service Center a day later…) This was shot with the camera pointing almost straight up, with the north star just outside the frame at the lower right, and the star trails rotating around that position. The illumination is from a combination of light from the nearly-full moon and nearby artificial lighting – and a very long exposure. I don’t understand exactly how this massive steel structure was used, but it is part of the shipbuilding facilities at the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard. These structures tower over the old shops and other buildings at the facility.

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: shipyard, structure, equipment, truss, steel, beam, scaffold, overhead, above, sky, night, star, trails, yellow, blue, moon, light, artificial, mare island, naval shipyard, minsy, vallejo, california, usa, historic, bay area, nocturnes, nocturnal, photography, stock