An industrial building with green windows and a shadow-casting staircase, Mare Island Naval Ship Yard
The lighting is part of what has made photography there so interesting. It includes a wild range of sources—sodium vapor, mercury, fluorescent, tungsten, moonlight, and more—and sometimes turns otherwise bland structures into brilliantly colorful subjects. More recently there have been changes to the area lighting on the island. Now the older, colorful lighting is gradually being replaced with sun-white LED lights!) While I have to agree with the goal of increased energy efficiency, many of us mourn the loss of those old, colorful light sources. The LEDs can produce light that looks almost like daylight in some situations!
The first thing that brought me to the general area of this photograph was a pool of bright light in front of it that I saw coming from a very bright light across the roadway. As I approached I saw the interesting old external staircase, a subject that I often find interesting at Mare Island, and the complex pattern of shadows cast by the lights. I’m also a fan of the many large banks of windows in the buildings on the island. I’ve always assumed that the construction must have included so much glass so as to provide better interior light for these very large shop buildings. These windows are somewhat opaque, perhaps at least partially from age, and the lighter objects inside are only seen faintly through the glass.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist 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
A night scene from the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard
This is another night photograph from the historic Mare Island Naval Shipyard near Vallejo, California. It is hard to explain what attracted me to this specific subject, though the photograph is one of a small series I shot of this wall and the white building. (A “series” of night photographs often comprises a small number of photographs, since it often takes many minutes to complete a single exposure.)
I began by photographing from a position far to the right, where there was a large puddle of reflecting water between my position and the two buildings, and then I worked my way around the scene to finally shoot it straight on. In addition to the water, I was intrigued by the color contrast between the salmon colored wall and the stark white shack in front of it. (Though, to be honest, in the near darkness I had to make some assumptions about what the colors might actually be!) This photograph contains a number of elements that are common at Mare Island, especially at night. The architecture itself is typical—mostly quite utilitarian, with many very large buildings that were constructed for ship-building industry. There are often exposed pipes and wires and other elements. It is common to see weathered paint and rust. Windows are everywhere, often comprising surprisingly extensive portions of the exterior walls. I’ve never asked anyone, but my assumption is that it was less expensive to “light” the interior naturally than to use artificial light to illuminate such large spaces. The photo also illustrates a much more modern feature. Not long ago, when I first photographed here, the lights were often quite colorful, including sodium vapor, tungsten, fluorescent, mercury, and more. This often produces wildly colorful images at night. But today, for energy efficiency reasons, neutral colored LED lighting is being installed everywhere, and the color balance is more like that of daylight.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist 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
Glowing lights inside a shop building at Mare Island Naval Shipyard, reflected in a pool of rainwater
I have now been doing night photography at the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard near Vallejo, California for perhaps a decade. Back when I visited for the first time I would not have expected that night photography or this particular location would still occupy me today, but they do. In many ways, photographing this location at night is an almost meditative experience. I’m long past the initial surprise to find such a place exists—with its long history and old structures in varied states of decay—and I now regard it as a familiar place. The photography itself is part of the attraction. I continue to find new subjects and to see old subjects in new ways and to watch how the place changes over time. But it is also about the slow, quiet, and methodical work of photographing at night. In many places I can barely see my subjects, and I have to wander around slowly and carefully, taking time to look in places that might initially not seem to offer anything of interest. When I think of this photography, the damp air near the waterfront and the deep quiet form as great a part of the experience as anything else.
This visit followed a week when several rain storms had passed over the Bay Area. (I had missed the actual storms, as I was away photographing in Death Valley.) As soon as I arrived at Mare Island I noticed that there were puddles everywhere, so I was on the lookout for reflections. This building is absolutely huge, but in other ways not all that exciting in daylight—but at night, with interior lights glowing, it can become a bit mysterious.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist 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
I have so many photographs in the queue right now that I have decided to do something a bit different and post some of them in collections. This first group features night photography from the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, a location where I have been doing night photography for about a decade now. As is often the case, this visit was with my friends from The Nocturnes, the San Francisco Bay Area night photography group.
A street light illuminates tracks running down Railroad Avenue at historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard
This is probably one of the iconic views of the nighttime environment at Mare Island, as it was made in a location where many night photographers start, whether it is their first visit or their fiftieth time there. The spot is near the Mare Island Museum, which holds many objects and photographs from the long history of the place as the first important west coast naval ship yard. The tracks – obviously! – given this street its name. The tower is the chimney of the old power plant, and off in the distance more of the old ship yard buildings are visible.
Red light behind the door of an industrial building at the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard
I was interested in the windows, doorway, and wall of this building for several reasons on this visit. First – and night photographers will understand – Mare Island has recently started to see an update of its lighting. As newer and presumably more energy-efficient types of lighting become available, the older lighting gets replaced. Some years ago the move was to the intensely yellow sodium vapor lights (which you can see in other images in this set), but today it is to what I understand are LED systems. Since the ambient light is tremendously important to night photographers, we notice that this produces a significant change in the mood of photographs made here since the LED light seems to have a much more subtle coloration that is closer to what we might regard as daylight. The new lighting has been installed by this building, so I wanted to see how I could use it to make a photograph that still captured the feeling of the night. In addition, I noticed some subtle red interior lights behind the doorway that seem to suggest something a bit mysterious in this scene.
A green tinted shadow falls across the front of a yellow building, Mare Island Naval Ship Yard
There are several things I like about this photograph of the side of a tall building and a lower section casting an odd green shadow. In much night photography we create photographs of things that we actually cannot see – essentially we are making photographs of what the camera sees. Standing in front of this scene it was very, very dark and the details of the building wall was barely visible at all. However, after shooting this stuff for some time I can recognize what might happen with an exposure long enough to make this scene visible. The old sodium vapor lamps are still installed along this street, and I knew that their yellow light would have a powerful effect on the colors of the scene. I also know that where there is a shadow that is not illuminated by sodium vapor light, the shadow will take on the colors of other kinds of ambient lighting – in this case a relatively green type of light coming from a nearby open area. In the end, without actually doing any light painting (the process of using colored lights and gels to illuminate the subject) I was able to make a photograph that is “naturally” just as wildly colorful.
Metal wall with white doors, window, and Reserved Parking sign
The plain and simple geometry of this building and its front wall has attracted me for several years, with its vertical lines, square forms of the door and the shadows, and the surprising orange highlights – and I have photographed it before. This building is now also lit by the newer lighting, so I had to see what I could do with this new coloration. I made two photographs of it. This one is a simple, straight-on view that is “about” the angular and square forms and the thin lines of orange paint and asphalt, with the only curves coming from the shadows in the window and a bit of broken-off pipe near the bottom center.
White door on a metal building with industrial structures of Mare Island Naval Ship Yard in the distance
This is a different take on the same wall, here composed off-center so that some of the darker ship yard machinery and structures can be seen.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist 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
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
