Tag Archives: yellow

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

Ship Yard Structure, Night

September 24, 2009 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A towering ship yard structure against fog lit by artificial lighting at the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, Vallejo, California.

An explanation of the colors in this photograph is probably in order. If you had been there next to me, looking up at the sky past this tall steel structure, you would not have seen colors that looked like this. It was, of course, dark out! You would have noticed a glow coming from the base of the fog clouds that were overhead, but it would not have seemed to have much of a color beyond a certain “warm” effect.

However, once I extend the exposure time so that I get a “normal” exposure in the camera (a bit more than three minutes in this case) light and color that are not visible to the human eye become visible to the camera. During RAW conversion I did not significantly alter the colors – these are what ACR refers to as “as shot” color balance. So we get this wild, luminous effect in the fog clouds and the brightness of the light on the structure becomes similar to that of daytime light… except the colors are different and many of the shadows come from sources that would be impossible in a daytime exposure.

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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keywords: mare, island, naval, ship, yard, minsy, vallejo, california, night, nocturnal, photography, historic, structure, scaffold, steel, wire, industrial, equipment, beam, steps, ladder, rust, yellow, fog, sky, illumination, artificial, light, usa, tower, overhead, equpment, cage, platform, bolt, rivet, stock

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

Shipbuilding Yard Towers, Night

September 19, 2009 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

High fog across the night sky above towers at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Vallejo, California.

I’ve had the good fortune to be able to do night photography at the historic Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo, California on a number of occasions over the past few years – largely because I discovered The Nocturnes, the SF Bay Area night photography group run by Tim Baskerville. (If you are looking for night photography events, workshops, and general information – you would do well to visit their web site.) The Nocturnes photograph regularly at Mare Island (also known as “MINSY”) and I got my first, ahem, exposure to night photography via one of their events.

This visit, on the final night of August, was the first time I’ve shot there when it wasn’t an event sponsored by The Nocturnes, and it seemed a bit odd to be the person most experienced at shooting here. This event was more or less organized by SF Bay Area photographer Ivan Makarov who contacted me ahead of time for some information about shooting at MINSY and invited me to join his group if I could. I could, so I did.

After shooting there a half dozen times or so, it starts to seem a bit too easy to keep shooting the same Mare Island icons in the same way, so this time I decided to try to shoot a few things that I had not shot before and to shoot some of the familiar subjects in somewhat different ways. One decision I made was to – for the most part – avoid the usual super-wide-angle shots that seem so obvious in this environment. I started out using a 70-200mm zoom instead and later moved to shooting with normal to slightly long primes. (I did fall back on the UWA approach for a few shots – heck, if it works I’m going to do it!) Another factor was that we did not have the totally clear full-moon skies that I’m more familiar with from previous MINSY shoots. We had a softer but earlier 3/4 moon, and at times there was quite dense high fog. The fog obviously obscures the sky and reduces/eliminates the star trail photographs, but it also picks up and then spreads a wonderful diffuse light from the many natural and artificial light sources found at MINSY.

The photograph shown here was made with the long zoom and includes nearly complete fog coverage of the sky. The lighting is a crazy combination of light from nearby Vallejo reflected in the clouds, garish sodium vapor lighting coming from beyond the scaffolding, and some “natural” light from the moon on the front of the metal building. (One of the things I enjoy about night photography in a location like this is that with so many wildly different light sources there is no correct color balance – so I get to pick!

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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keywords: minsy, mare, island, naval, ship, yard, historic, vallejo, california, tower, steel, truss, equipment, industrial, bridge, star, trail, fog, light, building, shack, loading, dock, door, window, stairs, steps, asphalt, wire, rust, worn, abandoned, stock, tall, shadow, night, photography, nocturnal, metal, concrete, cement, glow, yellow

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Late-Season Corn Lilies and White Flowers

September 18, 2009 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Golden late-season corn lily plants at Half Moon Meadow, Yosemite National Park, California.

The summer goes so quickly in the High Sierra! It was barely a month ago that I was in the Young Lakes region for a few days and the wildflowers were just starting to come into form, and only a couple weeks ago when I encountered peak condition wildflowers above 10,000′ in the upper Sabrina Basin. While you can still find wildflowers – including in this photograph! – if you know where to look in the Sierra, the signs of the coming autumn are beginning to appear throughout the high country, as they do every year at about this time.

Every year, there seems to be a day during the second half of August when I’m in the Sierra and I get a very clear and distinct impression of a change. In many cases I’m hard pressed to identify exactly what it is, but I know it is there. It might be something about the changing angle and quality of the light. Sometimes I think changing air movement and wind patterns may play a part. Perhaps it is the end of the lush moisture from melting snow. In other cases it is more obvious – like when I begin to see these late-season corn lily plants begin their transition: first they are thick and green; then a bit of brown begins to appear at the tips of the leaves; soon the veined pattern of the leaves begins to pick up brown and yellow streaks; before long some of the plants turn wild yellow and gold colors and their stems begin to weaken; and in a short time they fall over and taken on the texture and color of old corn stalks.

I photographed these brightly colored leaves at the edge of Half Moon Meadow in Yosemite during the last week of August while on a three-day pack trip into the Ten Lakes Basin.

(If anyone can identify the small white flowers in this photo I would be very grateful. And, no, the flowers are not growing from the bright yellow corn lily plants! 10/11/09 – I think we have a winner. It looks like it might be a plant called gray’s lovage.)

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.

Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Public Stairway, Telegraph Hill

September 8, 2009 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A public stairway ascends Telegraph Hill from downtown San Francisco, California.

Yes, I’m still extracting more photographs from my mid-August morning walking across a good portion of downtown San Francisco. After walking from the train station across Market and through the Chinatown area to North Beach, I wandered a bit around the latter neighborhood, eventually ended up in the Telegraph Hill area. While waiting for some traffic weirdness to pass I happened to look down a side street and catch a view back toward downtown buildings, so I wandered over that way and ended up going down this very steep “sidewalk” a bit.

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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keywords: public, sidewalk, walk, stairs, stairway, handrail, rail, steps, wall, leaves, yellow, paint, spots, worn, gray, urban, city, downtown, telegraph, hill, san francisco, california, usa, olive, green, up, down, street, travel, architecture, structure, stock

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.