Tag Archives: trestle

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: Urban/Street

Yellow Trestle and Night Sky

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Yellow Trestle and Night Sky
Yellow Trestle and Night Sky

Yellow Trestle and Night Sky. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, California. February 12, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Yellow trestle and night sky above historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard near Vallejo, California.

This trestle is one half of a pair of the structures that were apparently used for moving large parts of ships, perhaps including engines, from nearby work areas to the waterfront where ships were under construction at the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard. This area is no long in use (with the possible exception of some ship dismantling work) and the tall structures that tower over the area are gradually rusting and weathering.

The gaudy light comes from a combination of the yellow paint on the steel structures and the intensely colored sodium vapor lamps used to light the area. The glow in the sky comes from the town of Vallejo, just across the water from Mare Island. For this photograph I put the camera as I high as I could on the tripod so as to shoot over the top of a rather tall fence. (Yet another use for live view – I was able to compose and focus the image even though the camera was perhaps a foot above me.) I aimed the camera up to try to exclude a lot of the buildings and other structures that are found below these towers, since I wanted the simply diagonal of the trestle to be largely unobstructed. The star trails in the sky are the result of three minute exposure.

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.