
I recently had a chance to return to this ship yard facility near Vallejo, California to work on night photography. This is the place where I first tried that genre approximately fifteen years ago. It was more or less on a whim — I read that someone was inviting photographers to come up to Mare Island, in conjunction with the annual Flyway Festival, and find out about night photography. I knew almost nothing about it, but decided to give it a try. Since that time I’ve been hooked. I’ve returned to photograph here often during the intervening decade and a half, and my night photography expanded from that beginning to incorporate other subjects and places. (Recently I have focused on night street photography done with small handheld cameras.)
This photograph is an example of several things that intrigue me about photographing at night. Scenes that might seem mundane in daylight are transformed at night. Not only do many distractions simply disappear, but the light itself, especially in areas with varied artificial illumination, transforms these subjects. In many places LED lights have replaced the wild mix of tungsten, fluorescent, sodium vapor, and other sources today — an unfortunate development in the visual sense, as LED light is more or less like daylight. But in places like this one, the colors of the light become intense. Here the intense green of a large work light predominates. Another appeal of night photography is that it lets me make photographs of things that my eyes cannot see. In the ambient lighting I could only barely see the details of this scene. But with a long exposure there is enough light to reveal hidden features, a pure example of “seeing what the camera sees.”
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him.
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