Tag Archives: wood

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

Moonlit Stairs and Windows

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Moonlit Stairs and Windows - Metal staircase and wood framed windows on an old building at the Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, photographed under the light of the full moon.
Metal staircase and wood framed windows on an old building at the Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, photographed under the light of the full moon.

Moonlit Stairs and Windows. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, California. April 16, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Metal staircase and wood framed windows on an old building at the Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, photographed under the light of the full moon.

This month I have had the opportunity to return to the ongoing task for filing through older raw files to see what I missed the first time around. (The task also leads to deleting some files that I originally held on to.) For me this is an important ritual, as I often accidentally “leave behind” some photographs when I first review them – either I get to busy and move on before I fully explore them, or in some cases I simply don’t yet “see” the photograph when I look at it too soon after making it. I have a theory about the latter issue. Sometimes I think I’m so invested in what I hoped or thought the photograph would be that I fail to see what it really is, at least until I’ve waited a while.

The subject of this photograph is the exterior of a building at the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard in Vallejo, a place that I have photographed only in the dark! I have worked with this building before. It is superficially a pretty uninteresting structure, but some of the unusual exterior stairways become interesting compositionally when illuminated by moonlight as in this photograph. I’ll share a few odd technical details about this one, too. The exposure time was nearly 8 minutes! And the capture was still underexposed. Since I cannot meter a scene like this, I often make my first exposure based on some sort of educated hunch – and I guess I just couldn’t imagine that I’d have to stand there any longer than this! Of course, because of the distance between the close-in railing and the far portions of the upper story, I had to use a small aperture of f/16. And being concerned about noise I shot at ISO 200. In the dark. Right. So one reason that I think I neglected to work with this file was that it seemed underexposed – OK, it was underexposed, even given the very dark subject of the scene. However, when I began to work with the raw file I discovered that I could push it the equivalent of several stops and the image would still hold good quality without obtrusive noise. I like the odd combination of shapes and angles, and in the end I think the very dark interpretation is actually the right one for this subject.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Textures, Photographs: Urban/Street

Door Number Three

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Door Number Three - A loading dock door (#3) and a dilapidated and worn side door in a concrete wall, San Francisco.
A loading dock door (#3) and a dilapidated and worn side door in a concrete wall, San Francisco.

Door Number Three. San Francisco, California. April 20, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A loading dock door (#3) and a dilapidated and worn side door in a concrete wall, San Francisco.

There is not a whole lot to write about this photograph, except that it is another in a sequence of photographs that I made in a small alley off of the Embarcadero in San Francisco, an alley that extends between buildings toward the waterfront and which has often been locked up when I have walked by there previously. Since it and several similar alley ways were open on this morning, I took the opportunity to wander into them and photograph some of the old buildings that sit on these waterfront piers, focusing mostly on small details.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | 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.

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

Pilings and Water, Night

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Pilings and Water, Night - Pilings along the waterfront photographed at night, Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, California.
Pilings along the waterfront photographed at night, Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, California.

Pilings and Water, Night. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, California. March 3, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Pilings along the waterfront photographed at night, Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, California.

This is another photography from my nighttime visit to the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard with friends from The Nocturnes in early March of this year. The subject here includes some old and worn pilings along the edge of a ship launching ramp and the still water smoothed by the long exposure necessary to photograph here at night.

This particular spot only recently became accessible (at least without jumping a bunch of cyclone fences or getting someone to open the gate) when waterfront access was created near the ship yard museum. An area that had formerly been off-limits was opened to provide a way to get to the edge of the water, and this path parallels this ramp and the extensive structures alongside. In this photograph I made a color balancing choice that is a bit unusual for me when it comes to night photography in general and shooting at Mare Island in particular. One of the things that I enjoy about the night photography environment at Mare Island is that there are many different types of lighting, each having different color characteristics. Some are merely warmish “tungsten” like colors, others are garish yellows and greens, a few are blue, and the wash of light from nearby Vallejo and even the natural light of the moon can enter the mix. Because of this, I often simply go with the wild colors of the environment here. This scene is lit by grossly yellow sodium vapor lamps, and the “natural” coloration of the scene is quite intensely saturated. For this image I decided to color adjust this much closer to what might be regarded as a more neutral light color.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | 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.

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

“Feel Better”

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"Feel Better" - A barber "pole" with the words "Feel Better" and a hand painted laundry sign on the exterior wall of a dilapidated building, San Jose, California.
A barber "pole" with the words "Feel Better" and a hand painted laundry sign on the exterior wall of a dilapidated building, San Jose, California.

“Feel Better”. San Jose, California. December 28, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A barber “pole” with the words “Feel Better” and a hand painted laundry sign on the exterior wall of a dilapidated building, San Jose, California.

Another photograph made while wandering about in my neighborhood. These signs are on the side of a very old and very dilapidated little wood-sided building that houses a barber shop and a cleaners. The building is leaning so badly and on such uneven ground that it is a wonder that it is still standing and that the city still allows people to occupy it. Yet, it seems like the two businesses inside, which give the appearance of having been there a long time, continue to hang on.

The crazily tilting, off-kilter walls along the side of the building first caught my attention, so I went around to the side to make some photographs of this wall. Once I got closer I was intrigued by the barber “pole” (or the cheapest imaginable imitation of the real thing, nailed to the wall) with its odd label, “FEEL BETTER” near the bottom. The hand-painted sign for the cleaners was also interesting. Today it seems like most business signs have been extruded at the same business sign factory, and they often share a uniform slickness and lack of individual character. Not true of this sign! I looks like perhaps the owner painted it himself or herself, and that this person had just enough painting skill to pull it off, but not so much as to be overly slick, to put it mildly. The oddly spaces hand-lettering and the “personalized” paintings of suits hanging on hangars are not the sort of thing you usually see in this area, but they do have a certain charm.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | 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.