Night Photography Blog by Tom Paiva

First, a happy new year to you all.

Over the past year, I have been working on a major project photographing the state of closed auto dealerships in Los Angeles.  I started this series a year ago, after reading that GM and Chrysler shut down almost 3,000 dealers nationwide in the previous two years, not to mention over 1,000 more that went out of business by attrition due to the poor economy and other circumstances.  The sheer number of closed dealerships is a dramatic indication of the damage of the current recession.

Economic hardship has taken its toll even in car-culture LA.  It is ironic that so many dealerships would be closed, as there are still so many cars being purchased daily.  For a sense of scale, there are about 232 million cars nationwide and over 26 million cars in LA (that’s 1.8 for every man, woman and child).  Over 10% of all the cars in the country are in LA.  We Angelenos drive over 300 million miles daily.  Sobering numbers, to be sure, and it reflects that the car is an important part of life and work in LA.

Cars wear out and need to be replaced.  But American consumers are keeping their cars longer then ever; the average age of a car in the US in now 11 years old (incidentally the same age as my car).  Hence, a contributing factor in closing some of the new car dealerships.

As I delved into this series, I did some research to discover how boarding up all these dealerships affects the economy.  By mid 2011, an estimated 200,000 people were laid off nationwide due to the systematic closure of the dealerships, putting a major workforce of mechanics, sales and administrative staff out on the street in a stressed economy.  This is not just affecting Detroit and other manufacturing locations, but affects us all in our local areas.

Because of the historical and cultural importance of this project, I wanted to shoot it in 8 x 10 with the last of the color film that I had stockpiled (most 8 x 10 color films have been discontinued).  I shot about 175 views at 15 closed dealerships in LA county over the past year.  During this period, I saw many other boarded up locations in my travels, especially in the Inland Empire east of LA and other rural locations around the country, but decided to limit the project to LA.  I wanted to focus on the impact close to home and as it relates to LA’s relationship to cars and car culture.

In keeping with the tone of this blog, here are a small selection of twilight and night images.

Not just dealers from the “Big Three” of Ford, GM and Chrysler have been affected.  Above is a former Honda dealership.  This is a 15-minute exposure started at twilight, and it was totally dark when finished.  The light on the left is from streetlights.  That is a cloud in the upper right that remarkably stayed in the same shape and location for the long exposure.

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The auto industry has had many types of transitions in the past three years, including the death of several marque car brands.  Above is a vacant Mercury dealership in Downey, a city that has experienced a number of closures.  This facility has a couple of “security” lights on and they are actively trying to sell the property.  I was hassled by security at this location (as well as a couple of others), but when they saw the “seriousness” of camera, and that I was not there to loot or damage anything, the guard left me alone to shoot.

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At this closed Chevrolet dealership, the windows and doors were boarded up and locked down tight in this twilight shot.  Oddly, the Spanish signage ‘esperamos’ translates into “hope”, but with the rest of the words out of view, the meaning is “hoping to see you”.  I think not at this point…

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As you can read on the building, this is a former Chrysler/Jeep dealership.  Security was tight at this location on a weekday evening and I was limited to shoot from the sidewalk.  Nevertheless, there were a couple of good shots to be had including this illuminated “Customer Parking” sign.  It is in sharp contrast to the chained fences at each entrance and lonely parking lot.  Balancing the artificial lights of the sign and twilight was part of the waiting game.  I did get back to this location on a Sunday night and had better luck with the weekend security guard.

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There was a bleakness to this forlorn auto pedestal in the empty parking lot.  This dealer began business in the 1950s, and I can imagine some big finned beauty sitting on this perch years ago.

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This former Chrysler dealership near Hollywood is not so “Five Star” any longer.  Note the office chair on the right which is for the security guard.  When he left for his meal break, I had run of the place.  Careful placement of the camera to hide the very bright and blaring security light behind the post was important in getting this melancholy exposure.  l love the trails of the auto traffic on the street at the left.

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The carefully papered windows of this former BMW dealership contribute to this forlorn image.  Determining the exposure was difficult, as it is lit from the intermittent passing cars on Sepulveda Blvd.  Complex camera movements were needed to retain focus throughout, on this 20-minute exposure.  It appeared considerably darker to the eye than in this shot.

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It was the bright light off to the right, illuminating the weeds of the parking lot that piqued my interest to make this view at a former Mercedes dealership.  The bright mercury-vapor security lamp casting the beam of light mixing with a sodium-vapor lamp over my shoulder adds the subtle play on color.

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The Art-Deco influenced design of this former Ford location, built in the 1940s, was intriguing.  Because of these unusual design cues, I returned to shoot at this locale more than any other.  It was a sprawling location with many buildings and interesting architectural details, like this ‘Welcome’ sign.  Note the staggered glass block wall in the background.  This is a 30-minute exposure night shot using only available light.  This facility has been sold and is being razed soon for a new hotel on the location.

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Most of the locations had a series of fences to keep vandals and homeless people out.  This image, actually shot from inside the dealership, conveys the feeling of the locked down facility with the empty lot beyond.  I shot at twilight with minimal focus on the edge of the gate.

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In this 30-minute exposure, a security lamp is raking light across the heavily textured wall.  The long shadows are from the poles on the left.  The clouds were moving in just the right direction that evening, echoing the roof-line.

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A bright security lamp from the bank next door ATM machine is casting the shadow on one of the old light fixtures from this empty dealership parking lot.

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One of the 15 locations I shot was a thriving dealer in Norwalk in the early 2000s when I photographed it for the architect just after it was built.  Now, less than 10 years later, it is closed and vacant.  By the end of 2011, two of the 15 have been demolished, two have re-opened as used car dealerships, and the others are still vacant, awaiting whatever is next.

Many have asked why I focused on this project.  I wanted to portray the story of the impact of the economy on the many people hit so hard by the failures of the auto industry:  the dealerships, many of which were family businesses; the 200,000 laid off workers; and the millions of dollars lost.  The buildings bear witness and are the scars that remain.  At night, they convey the quiet ache of loss.  Shooting the way I do is more than documentation, as I try to capture the feeling of the locations.

Shooting in the 8 x 10 format gives me the discipline be very critical and selective about what I shot and how I shot it.  Large format has a wonderful tonality and captures amazing detail; the images can be enlarged to virtually any size and retain their beauty and depth.   But large format is also very demanding.  Waiting for 15 – 20 minutes for the light to be perfect is common, as are the long 20 – 30 minute exposures at night.  I usually get only 4 – 7 views per visit.    It was a challenge having to overcome many technical issues and to be patient.

While I am working, I think a lot about the dealerships when they were going concerns, of the people who worked at these locations, of theirs and the dealerships role in the communities in which they were a big part, and of the people who came in to get just the right new car for their needs.  All of us are hunkering down now, navigating the changes thrust on us by these challenging times, and trying to find the best way through to better prospects.

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Here is an image of me shot by my fellow 8 x 10-shooting friend and colleague, Tom Johnson, made with my point and shoot digital camera.  He shot with me on a couple of the evenings.  It gives an idea of what the camera set up looks like.

To view more on this series, I did two other postings from this series early last year, one on a Googie style dealer and another dealer.

With business a bit slow this time of year, I decided to re-visit a location I shot at between 1995 and 2004 at the Port of Long Beach.  This facility loads bulk materials such as potash, sodium sulfite and petroleum coke onto ships.  There are rail cars and conveyor belt systems all over the yard, much of it hidden underground.  They even have their own locomotives to move the rail cars.  Most of the process is automated, but there is a small hearty group that operates the frontloaders and other heavy equipment.

I had not been to the site in about 7 years, so was surprised to see some of the facility has been demolished, including the round sulfur barns, that I photographed in the 90s.  There are several images of this location in my 2002 book, Industrial Night.

This group was shot over two evenings, with a view camera on 4×5 film, as usual for my personal work.

This twilight view on an overcast evening shows a shed that the rail cars are wheeled in to drop their load into the hoppers below onto an underground conveyor system.  The white on the ground in the shed is sodium sulfite, a  white granular chemical mined in the desert about 150 miles from LA.

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This colorful image was shot at night with a very wide lens between shift changes.  Within minutes of completing this 5 minute exposure, the locomotive was again pushing the railcars into this shed.  This facility actually rotates the rail car to the inverted position to dump the product.  The camera is about three feet off the ground for this shot as finding just the right position to block most of the lights was a challenge.  I could not hide the one on the left, although it’s partially blocked.  The ‘light’ at the top is actually the crescent moon moving across the night sky.

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This image is lit by a mercury vapor light spilling from the partially open door on the left.  It has a sense of mystery that caught my eye.  It was quite dark and required a 12 minute exposure.

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This shot of the side of one of the containment buildings shows how these facilities are all about function over form.  It might sound strange, but I find these completely man-made locations intriguing.  There is nothing ‘natural’ in this view, with everything being designed and built by humans to get a job done.  While I was setting up, a worker drove the Bobcat tractor into the position in the background totally by chance.  I quickly moved the camera a bit to the right to get it completely in the shot.  I used front swing of the view camera to maintain focus from the Y-valve in the foreground to the background.  It was “only” a 4 minute exposure which would have required a 30+ minute exposure without using the camera movements.

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About a week later, I came back again and made this shot with the last few minutes of the setting sun casting shadows on this “coke barn”.  This image is all about textures and colors.  Within a couple of minutes this view was totally different.

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This view, using the last of the setting sun gives the gray building a warm glow.  The massive 6 foot high tires in the foreground are covered with a dusting of sodium sulfite.  It took almost 30 degrees of front lens tilt to get the tires and the background in focus, as this is shot with a “normal” lens and the tires are only 2-3 feet away.

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The intense blue of this twilight shot of the rail cars of sodium sulfite have an interesting hue, with a green tinge on the rusty cars.  This is my favorite time of day to shoot, and unfortunately, only lasts a few minutes.  It was a clear night as compared to the previous overcast evening.

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These two rail cars are “white”, but are they really?  With the wide mixture of industrial lamps on them, they become a cornucopia of subtle colors.  The blue/cyan sunset seen between the cars is the last of light in the sky.  The sunset appeared orange to the eye, but if I balanced the colors for the sky, the “white” rail cars would appear an unattractive muddy brown.  This color balance compromise is my version of “artist’s license”.

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This is a study in pipes and conveyor tubes.  Those tubes are about 12 foot in diameter and have a fast moving conveyor belt inside.  The light is predominately mercury vapor–a cold blue green, but there are sodium vapor lamps, including one on the shed on the right that is giving the magenta color cast.  There is almost 2 inches of front rise on the camera to maintain the dynamics of the image and the verticals vertical.

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It was great to re-explore this facility and to find new views.  Considering I shot this location over a period of 9 years, stopping 7 years ago, it is remarkable that there are still new images to be made.  Photographing with this sense of dedication and discipline is what I do with most every project I take on.  In this day and age of shortened attention spans, there are still a few of us who still have the persistence to study a location and the patience to shoot it at night at that, waiting for the camera to make the image.

As many of you know, I have been shooting the San Francisco Bay Bridge reconstruction project for 3 years now.  My most recent shoot got me onto the new bridge sections and access to the new SAS (Self-Anchored Suspension) Tower, that soars over 500 feet above the Bay.

This assignment, shot as a fine art project, is being shot in 4×5 because of its monumentality and architecture-like subject matter.  I can’t imagine switching to digital capture at this point, as it would have a totally different look.  Large format photography also makes one study carefully what to shoot and finding the right perspective.  Time of day is critical, too.  Typically, I shoot only 10-12 views per afternoon/evening.

In this first image at twilight, I shot from temporary scaffolding between the two roadways looking east.  With a very wide lens, I was able to capture both the base and top of the tower.  It is difficult to see, but there are workers about to board the boat in the lower right giving a sense of scale.  This view also shows the new catwalks that will guide the stringing of the cables.

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Moving to the left on this same platform, I shot this oblique view using a different film, too.  The green of the mercury vapor lamps really made the water seem to glow.

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This unusual angle shows the temporary equipment that will help guide the cables around the saddle on the southwest corner of the bridge.  The existing bridge is in the background.  This is a 10 minute exposure, as it was quite dark.

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In this night view, I shot from the main concrete anchorage on Yerba Buena Island.  On the right is the westbound roadway under construction and on the left the concrete pillars that will support the eastbound lanes.  This is a very contrasty lighting situation and finding the right position to block as many of the construction lights as possible made me shoot from a difficult position in the middle of a construction scaffolding with only 4 feet of headroom.  It is a 15 minute exposure.  I especially like the red taillights of a vehicle left of center.

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On the second evening, I was able to get access to the top of the tower.  Here is a twilight view looking east showing the span, the cable catwalks and the existing structure on the right.  All the dark red steel structure is for construction and will not be part of the finished bridge.

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In this sweeping twilight view, we can see almost all of Yerba Buena Island and the skyline of San Francisco beyond.  Traffic was heavy inbound into SF that evening.  The blue structure which seems to be floating is to help with the guiding of the cables.

To get an idea of how much detail is in a 4×5 transparency, here is an enlargement of a small section of this image.  The freeway signs are readable and individual windows in the skyscrapers across the bay are visible.

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I did one final shot that evening on the tower as the light was fading to show how precarious it is out in the open over 500 feet in the night air.  As you can see, there is not much protection on the catwalks and scaffolding and I always walk very carefully and never hurry, especially when carrying a large format camera/tripod climbing or decending stairs.  There is almost always the issue of wind out on the bay, too.  The endless walking, climbing stairs while carrying equipment really gives me a workout, too!  In the end, I find just being in this environment exhilarating and I feel privileged to be part of this important project.

This blog has turned into sort of a travel blog as of late (which has not been my intention), so I wanted to talk about something more technical, but at the same time show some interesting images, most at twilight and at night.

As most of you know, I shoot a lot of architecture and industrial locations–man-made subjects. Keeping the verticals vertical is a challenge, especially with wide-angle lenses. We call this converging of lines the “keystoning effect”, as it has a wedge-like look to the verticals.

I rented the new Canon 24mm and 17mm tilt shift lenses from Samy’s Camera in Hollywood, with the intention of purchasing one.  Renting to try out expensive lenses like these is a great way to help make your decision.  For those who want to see these lenses with reviews and how they work, click here for the 24mm and here for the 17mm.  I found both lenses to be razor sharp and excellent in build quality and smooth movements–even for the heavily used rental units.

The next three shots are daytime shots, but are a good example of what these lenses can do.  They are the first three shots I made and are all shot from the same spot on the opposite corner.  In this first shot, I photographed the old May Company building at Wilshire Blvd. and Fairfax Ave. (now the offices for the LA County Museum of Art) with my regular 24mm wide angle lens.

Note how the building appears to tilt backwards.  It doesn’t, of course, but it is caused by tilting the camera upwards.

Here is the same image shot with the 24mm tilt shift lens with some rise added.  Note the verticals are vertical (the black ‘wings’ surrounding the gold mosaic rounded corner are, indeed, canted and not vertical).

Here is the same view shot with the 17mm tilt shift lens.

Note the much wider field of view and how I am able to get the top of the flag pole, too.  In this wider view, the palm trees add to the composition.  You can fix this sort of perspective distortion in Photoshop, but the quality of the image is degraded considerably.

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On the grounds of LACMA, I shot the Ahmanson Building and used the Rodin statue of Balzac as the subject.  This is with the 17mm tilt shift lens.

I then shot with the 24mm tilt shift lens and moved back 15 feet.  Notice the less exaggurated lines on the building.  I put a bit of swing in here too and shot wide open at f3.5 to add some interesting focus selection.  Note the very different perspective.

The reason I chose this statue is that it is a duplicate of the same Rodin statue that Steichen shot in the moonlight around 1908 in Paris–the earliest known night image using only moonlight).

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Later that evening I tested the lenses in Culver City where I live, where we have some interesting modern architecture in the Hayden Tract area.  These next two twilight images are where one of my photo labs are.  Note the difference in perspective from the 24mm…

…vs. the 17mm view, below.

Both of these images have the basically same field of view (I moved about 10 feet closer for the 17mm shot).  Which is better is a matter of opinion.

Here is another pair of images with the 24mm…

…and the 17mm, below.

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And finally, another pair shot on the overcast night.  The first is with the 24mm lens,

which I was happy with, but also tried the 17mm lens, below…

…and liked the idea of getting close enough to eliminate much of the parking lot, isolating the structure even further.

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The next day, I used the lenses on a commercial job to shoot a new city hall.

In practice, I found the 17mm lens more versatile, getting shots that are almost impossible to get with any other lens, especially for interiors.

After two days of shooting all sorts of imagery, both day and at night with both lenses, I had made my decision and have purchased the 17mm tilt shift lens.

Due to heavy business traveling over the past month, I am a bit behind on the blog posts. For this post, I will take advantage of a trip I made to South Carolina, Georgia and Florida to visit family and to have a little fun along the way. Using frequent flier mileage took the sting out of that expense.

October is a wonderful time of year to travel most anywhere, as the kiddies are back in school, their parents back to work, and the weather is usually pleasant. The South can have blistering hot and humid weather, not to mention monsoon rains, but on this trip it was mostly in the 70s-80s with just a few days of light rain.

The first night we stayed at a motel on I-95 just outside of Savannah.  It made for a long day, having to get up at 3am that day for a 6am flight connecting through Denver with a 2+ hour layover connecting on to Jacksonville, FL. The frequent flier seats are very limited and the flights available were not the best, but you get what you pay for. Between the flights and driving for several hours, I wanted to get out and shoot at twilight, where I took this shot.

The four parking lot lights criss-crossed over the two bikes and poles, making for some interesting shadows.

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We stayed with my my wife’s cousin, Jimmy in Spartanburg, SC, a quiet, sedate little berg, made famous as the corporate headquarters of Extended Stay America Motels and Denny’s Restaurants (who occupy the tallest skyscraper in town.) Also, all the BMW SUVs sold in the world are made in Spartanburg.

Jimmy’s  house was decorated to the nines with Halloween decorations.  I especially liked this row of illuminated skulls, photographed best at twilight.

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We drove on to Savannah, GA, a beautiful, historic city that really represents the best of the South to me.  We stayed at the River Street Hotel, with a room overlooking the Savannah River.  That put us in the middle of town, with walking access to great restaurants, bars and museums.  The 4 foot square balcony gave me just enough room to set up a tripod to do a time-lapse sequence.  The following is about 500 individual images over a two and a half hour time frame (5AM to 730am) showing night through sunrise.  Watch for all the containership traffic.  I also did a sunset version, but the sky was more interesting in this dawn version, there was more ship traffic and I like all the early morning delivery trucks, too.

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While waiting for a table for dinner that night, I did this shot from the bar with my mini tripod.

The walls are, indeed pink, as this place is the famous Olde Pink House restaurant.  The light is from a multi-faceted light fixture.  The food was fabulous and a reservation is highly suggested for next time.

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While Lee waited for a table (a 45 minute wait, with no reservation), I wanted to take advantage of twilight and the balmy weather, so I explored within a block of the restaurant and shot these images over just a few minutes, during my favorite twilight-time.

This was shot with the camera propped up on a stone wall.  I love the interesting mix of colors in this shot.  Note the Pink House Restaurant on the left.

These are simply down-spouts, but over the top in design.

Here a chained bicycle is lit by the overly bright light over the ATM machine, which I purposely blocked with the “no parking” sign.

Right behind the restaurant is a church, where I wandered up the steps to make this shot, leaning against a railing.  I like the mix of warm tones and cool tones from the sky.

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While in Savannah, we found out that there was a show at the Telfair Museum with 4×5 large format urban night shots.  Being another photographer who appreciates working at night with the big camera, that was a must-see for me.  The photographer is John Dowell who is a professor at Temple University in Philadelphia and the show was called “Harmonic Discord”.  I took a couple of clandestine photos in the galleries, but this link will show a couple of cleaner examples, with a bio on him, too.  The work seemed to have a sameness to them and I liked the abstractions better than the large amount of simple, wide night shots of skyscrapers in eastern US cities.

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On our last night in Savannah, I wandered around the hotel and shot some of the old historic buildings along Bay Street.

The buildings along Bay Street and River Street are multi-layered and they have different types of lighting which added to the look and texture that caught my eye.

As you can see from this image, the lower portions are for deliveries and trash pick-up and are lit with cold industrial mercury vapor lamps.  It appears in this image that the famous red Cotton Exchange Building from the 1880s appears to be a facade with no real footing–but it’s not.  Today it’s a restaurant/tavern.

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We drove on to St. Augustine, FL and spent one night to break the long drive and to explore that city’s historic architecture.  While wandering around the Castillo de San Marcos (or as the locals say, ‘The Fort’), I shot these young teens paddle boarding in Halloween costumes in the inland waterway.

I panned the camera during this half second exposure.  When I yelled to them they said they were off to a party.  It was Friday night, after all!

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This is not something I usually do, but here is a self portrait against the fort ramparts.  There was a bright floodlight that threw the shadow.  I had to do several to get the perspective right and to get one sharp enough for the 1/4 second exposure.  It looks acceptable at this size.

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We drove on across Florida visiting junk shops and taking many photos of nearly abandoned, closed down towns.  The economy has really hit some of the smaller, out of the way towns very hard.  Since they are shot during the day, I won’t share them here.

We drove on and visited my dad and his wife in central FL.  On the afternoon we arrived, there was an antique car show in town, so I took advantage to take a few shots.  The sunset and coloring was so intensely magenta-orange, quite different than sunsets here in Southern California.  I did this shot of a rare 1942 Studebaker, as I liked the mixture of the intense green and subtleties of the warm twilight sky.

It was a whirlwind trip, indeed.

Last month my good friend Rob invited me to NYC for a long weekend together and do the tourist bit, along with a jaunt out to Queens were we each lived as kids.  Being August, it was hot, which made for some balmy evenings to shoot.  The evening I arrived, I met with Kay Kenny, an NYU photography professor and good friend (who also teaches night photography) and we took the subway out to Coney Island where we wandered on the boardwalk to do some shooting.

The old parachute jump has been restored but doesn’t operate any longer.  The red light flickered on for a few seconds during this exposure, but we never saw them again.

-Further down the boardwalk, I was fascinated by this old roller rink, now closed.  It has a colorful mid-eastern theme.  I used custom white balance on this shot to neutralize the overpowering orange sodium vapor lamps.  We were one day before the full moon, which is helping to illuminating the sky.

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There was so much to shoot at night at amusement parks like Coney Island.  I made about 50 images in the rides section alone.

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At around 10pm, all of a sudden fireworks started and gave us a 20 minute show.  You would think as a night photographer, fireworks would be a common theme for me, but in reality, I have not shot fireworks in years.  I felt like the City was welcoming me with this show!  It being the weekend, there was lots going on, with families and friends everywhere.  You can see that nearly full moon and the reflection off the water.

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We wandered out on to the sand.  This exposure is 30 seconds, and the “Welcome to the Beach” sign is waving slightly in the breeze.  I like the rim lighting from the moon (hidden behind the sign) on the trash cans.

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Street shooting in the subway is always fun.  Note they guy with a bass fiddle on his back and the people in shorts as it was quite hot that evening.  This was shot from the hip leaning against an I-beam across 4 sets of tracks with a slight telephoto lens on my Sony NEX-5.

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I wandered down the end of the subway station beyond a “No Entry” sign where there was a bare bulb illuminating the catwalk down the subway tunnel.  Using my handy-dandy pocket tripod, and positioning myself to hide the lamp behind some plumbing, where I made this 10 second exposure.  It really shows how old the subways in NYC are.  It was a lot darker than it appears here and it smelled strong of urine.

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I was walking up 6th Avenue hoping to see the Jefferson Market Courthouse, but unfortunately it was tented for a major reconstruction.  The library is still open late where I shot this image in the side staircase.  The play of light and color caught my eye.

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One of the touristy things we did was go to the Top of the Rock there is an observation deck on the 67th floor of Rockefeller Center.  Sure, there were nice images to be had outside, and I made a few, but I was looking for something different where I shot this in the corridor that leads to the roof.  That green “fireworks” above the Empire State Building is a reflection of a light fixture behind me.  The arc is part of the GE logo on the outside of the building.  It is all about finding the right position.

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How can you go to NYC in August and not get rained on?  We did on two nights where it came down in buckets.  Here are a few street shots near Times Square where you can see how hard it rained.  I shot these from sheltered overhangs.

It is difficult to actually photography raindrops, as the light has to hit them just right, which it did in the above shot.

Police are everywhere in the Times Square area to keep an eye on the guys with bags on their heads!  We spoke to one cop who said just the sight of them keep ‘problems’ down.

We were lucky to get a cab back from dinner that night.

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While we were out at dinner, I set up the camera to shoot a three hour time-lapse sequence from one of our rooms that had the best view.  The window opened from the top a few inches, and we had to put the tripod on a table and stack up suitcases to get it to go up to 7 feet.  Notice the fast moving clouds and off-and-on rain that evening.  The flickering lights are spill from all the signage at Times Square.  The view is looking west down 47th Street towards the Hudson River.

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On the last evening, we were talking about how you don’t see any Checker Cabs anymore in NYC.  I told Rob I had not seen one in years on the streets of the City.  A few minutes later, what do we see, but a Checker Marathon cab parked near Grand Central Station!

The guys in the back seat had video cameras, so I think this was some sort of photo shoot.  The car had no license plates, either.

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One of the things I wanted to see on this trip was the Night Vision–Photography After Dark show on the “history” of night photography at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  The Met is always worth visiting, but with a show on night photography, I had to see it.

It covered the early master works including Paul Martin, Alfred Steiglitz, and Brassai, but also had some contemporary photography.  There were about 40 images displayed on dark blue walls, which I thought was effective.  Seeing original prints of images such as Alvin Langdon Coburn’s Broadway at Night and Berenice Abbott’s Nightview, New York is always a pleasure. Back in late 2010 on another trip to NYC, I had seen a major show of Steiglitz’s work at the Seaport Museum, including many of the famous night images.

Important work from photographers such as O. Winston Link were missing, and there also was no color work which was another disappointment.  I also felt the contemporary work was weak and even a bit contrived , such as the aerial photographs of Los Angeles houses spotlighted by a police helicopter.  I had the feeling that the curator simply pulled night images from the Met’s vast collection.

Several New Yorkers warned me that I probably would be disappointed, but it was worth seeing anyway.  The show came down last week.

In early June, I got access to an area near Pier 70 at the Port of San Francisco that has been closed since the 1989 earthquake.  They call this Building #6, which is over 500 feet long, built in 1941 and was used for ship building during WWII.  This area has been constantly broken into by “graffiti artists” over the years who have by now tagged over each others work, especially on the inside of this huge empty structure.  For more info and a map of this area, click here.

While the others shot inside, I was attracted to the adjacent environment of the bay.  again, I shot these in 4×5 with negative film.  It is surprising that the Port has not done anything with this structure and the surrounding area.

Here is a shot of the bay-side of the building in the foggy twilight.  I had to climb on broken sections of roadbed to get to this location and the tripod is on a piece of concrete that is at nearly a 40 degree angle–making it challenging to stand on, too!  The cranes in the background are at SF Drydock, and this building was part of that facility until it was deemed seismically unsound in 1989.  That doesn’t seem to worry the graffiti artists!

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Turning my camera eastward, this massive crane illuminated by a large and bright single lamp on the end of the drydock caught my eye.  In the background are the lights of the Port of Oakland across the bay.  Again, the overcast twilight gives a moody texture to the sky.

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Turning westward (there is still twilight in the western sky when it gets too dark looking eastward), I wanted to show this old abandoned building with the light coming through the myriad of broken windows.  Within minutes, the street and security lamps came on, changing the look considerably.

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It is now nighttime.  The dense overcast makes for a soft light on these rocks, old pilings and an abandoned structure out on a pier.  The pier itself has collapsed in places and you cannot get out there except by boat (even the existing piers look so unstable as you would not want to walk on them).  To get an idea of how dark it was, this is a 15 minute exposure.  The lights of Oakland across the bay are in the background.

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Here is an overall view of Building #6, lit by this lonely street light and spill light from the various industrial areas surrounding this area.  In my younger years, I would have climbed that vertical ladder to the perch on the near edge of the building, but not anymore.  The light on the left is from glow of downtown San Francisco, about 1.5 miles away.

These images were shot within a two hour time frame, and all shot within 100 feet of each other.  There is so much more to do in this area.  It is a pleasure to have access (and not having to sneak in), with the keys and permission to get beyond the locked gates and fences.  Many thanks to Dave and Gerry for access and the fun of shooting with Alan, too.

In continuing with the blog post from a couple of weeks ago on China, I’d like to share some images shot in Nanjing.

After two weeks in Shanghai, we wanted to move on to another location and initially, we had thought about Beijing, but the idea of another huge city sounded like too much for us both, since we only had 6 days left.  We made our decision the day before and chose Nanjing for several reasons; its history as the ancient capital of China; it’s the largest walled city in the world; it has a large system of canals and parks; and was less than two hours by high speed rail from Shanghai.  Another huge plus which we did not know at the time, was that it was 20 degrees cooler than in Shanghai–a welcome respite.

Nanjing is not small, by any means, as its population is nearly 8 million, comparable to New York City, the largest city in the US.  To get a handle on the population of China; the US has 9 cities with over a million while China has over 160 cities with over a million souls.  Like many things about China, these statistics are difficult to comprehend for Americans.

The tree lined city’s historical district were still teaming with people, as this city has visitors from all over the world, but mainly Chinese tourists.  We were told it was a popular getaway location for Shanghainese, especially on weekends.  We arrived on a Thursday, and by the weekend the hotel was full and so were the shopping districts and museums.  American ex-patriots living in Shanghai suggested we stay in a 5-star Chinese hotel for a third the price of a western chain.  The hotel was deluxe in a great location, but we had a hard time finding an English speaker.  We were the only Anglos at the hotel we saw the 6 days we stayed there.

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This twilight image was taken from a sidewalk cafe of one of the hundreds of canal boats.  I was concerned with the major problem of mosquitoes that is common in hot, humid canal areas like this, as I am typically the first to get bitten.  That is one of the common problems of being out at twilight.  There were definitely thousands of mosquitoes, but also hundreds of sparrows darting after them.  Within a few minutes the sparrows changed to bats and there were even more of them than the sparrows zooming within a few feet of us as they feasted on the mosquitoes.  I got only two bites during my entire stay in Nanjing thanks to this balance of the ecosystem.

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These next two images were taken from one of the dozens of bridges over the canals with the aid of a tiny fit-in-your-pocket tripod.  I did several, and these two came out the best with the light trails from the moving boats.

As you can see, the traffic on the canals is quite heavy!  These are 30 second exposures.

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Our hotel was right next to the gateway to the Confucius Temple, and we had a view from the front of the hotel.  The window opened about 6 inches, allowing a tripod and camera to be positioned without shooting through the dirty glass.  Here is a shot of the camera set up, shot from the other opening window.  It is followed by a time lapse I did that evening in the rain.

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It rained off an on during our stay in Nanjing which made for very humid conditions.  This vendor obviously had enough of being cooped up in his stall, and the rest of his family was put to work.  This man really shows how the heat and humidity made for shorter days out and about as it take so much out of you.  Living in Southern California, we are not used to this humidity.  I shot this while leaning against a pole to keep steady.  I had to shoot three to get one sharp enough.  His family was laughing as I shot this.

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One of the highlights of Nanjing was the City Wall, a nearly 16 mile wall around the city (originally 22 miles, built over 600 years ago).  This gives a great perspective of some of the most beautiful parts of the city and some of the poorest, too.  I left one afternoon while Lee was dealing with some “digestive issues” and climbed on to the wall near our hotel.  It is almost 50 foot wide on top and I wound up walking it for hours alone until I found an exit down.  I saw but one couple while walking the wall.  Again, my little tripod and Sony NEX-5 were with me, and afternoon became twilight into darkness.  I was lucky that it stopped raining once I was on the wall.

This shot was done from one of the wall crenelations, which is about 50-60 feet above the streets below.  This is at twilight on a heavy overcast evening overlooking an exclusive area of canals and bridges.  The orange light is from a sodium vapor lamp spilling up into the tree.

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From this twilight shot, you can see a temple and the skyscrapers of downtown in the distance.  In the center is one of many privately owned restaurants.  We stumbled on these when we went into one asking for directions.  There is such a wide range of income distribution in China that the very wealthy can afford to own their own restaurants for entertaining friends and clients that are not open to the public.  This was the first time I had heard of these.

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As you can see, the vantage point of the wall gives one the sense of being a voyeur.  Here a woman sits and watches TV in her simple apartment.  I found a vantage point between the trees and showing a pair of the many high rise apartment buildings in the background.   There is still a touch of light in the overcast twilight.

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Here is another back patio of an apartment lit by the flicker of the TV.  Note the solar hot water heaters on the rooftops.  These are seen most everywhere in China.

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Here is a section of the wall.  Nanjing, then known as Nanking, was brutally attacked by the Japanese in 1937.  They blew up sections of the wall to gain entry.  Over 700,000 were killed over a period of weeks as the army overtook the city.  Known as the “Rape of Nanking”, it was a foreshadowing of the brutality of WWII in the Pacific that was to come.  We visited a newly built museum to the Chinese “holocaust”, that was quite graphic by western standards and left little to the imagination of the horrors committed by the Japanese army.

It is now night time, but the ambient light of the city on the overcast night makes it look like twilight.  The glowing light at the end of the wall is a staircase down to street/canal level.  The exposure is about 15 seconds, shot with the mini tripod sitting on the wall.

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This shot is from the end of the wall where I climbed down to street level.  There is a bright light out of view blocked by a the wall and another light out of view behind the abutment on the lower left.  Finding the right vantage point was the most difficult task, as I had to lean the camera/tripod on the side of the wall.  I like the purple glow on the lower left structure from blue LED lighting.

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One of the niceties of this trip was my decision to upgrade using frequent flier mileage to first class on American Airlines’ new non-stop service from LA to Shanghai.  Other than the fine French champagne and made to order dinners (including “home-made” ice cream made on the aircraft with your choice of toppings!) the amount of space you have allows you to swivel and to fully recline.  The comforts of first class are many but one of the most important is that it makes a 12-13 hour flight seem like a trans-continental 5-6 hour flight in coach.  This is a 6 second exposure taken somewhere over the Pacific with the camera/tripod against the bulkhead at the toilet, while everyone slept.  It was almost totally dark to the naked eye.  My seat was the one in the middle, in row 2.  It was like traveling by jet in 1960, with all the amenities of that very different era.  I did wander back through business class to coach just to see the seating configuration on the Boeing 777 and it was packed back in “steerage” with not a single seat open, and noisy with crying babies–typical coach airline travel in 2011.  After almost three weeks, it felt good to come home.

For much of July, I was in China for the opening of the show of my work on the Bay Bridge construction project.  The images chosen were from my series shot back in 2009 on that trip to Shanghai.

For this post, I’d like to share some of the twilight and night images shot while I was there.

We arrived around 9pm local time, so we missed twilight.  We took the MagLev (MAGnetic LEVitation) high speed train into town that takes you the nearly 20 miles in just 7 minutes.  Here is a shot of the exterior of the Shanghai city station.  All these images were shot with my Sony NEX-5, an ideal travel camera.  I have a pretty steady hand to make this 1/4 second exposure.

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Shanghai is a thoroughly modern city, casting off the past at a furious pace.  The auto traffic was noticeably worse since my 2009 trip.  Here we are in a Volkswagen taxi (almost every taxi in this city of 28 million is a VW) crawling through the Bund Tunnel at night under the Huangpu River from Pudong to the Puxi side of town.  There was insipid TV, cartoons and videos to watch, but I quickly learned how to turn them off.

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One night we went out to see the Chinese Acrobat show (which was much better than I expected) and saw this interesting building next to the theater.  China has a unique sense of architecture, to say the least, and this building, housing a restaurant and shops seemed over the top for what it was.

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We stayed for a few days with American friends who have been living in Shanghai for about 18 months, which gave us valuable insight into daily life there, from an ex-pat’s view.  Let’s just say there are good and bad points!  Here is a twilight shot (using a mini tripod against a wall) from the open kitchen window (from the 25th floor) looking at some of the many high rises in Shanghai.  The overcast and smog are evident in this view.  The trees around their complex made for pleasant walks, as they included ponds and small bridges.  Mosquitos are a big problem in this city, and I always seem to attract them, but we learned that they rarely fly higher than 20 floors, so they were able to leave the windows and balcony doors wide open.  In July, though, the heat was too intense (hitting 100 with 90% humidity) that air conditioning was in order.

I did several time lapse sequences from their place and from hotel windows, and here is a two hour sequence compressed to a 30 second video.  It is shot from Clare and Richard’s guest room balcony where we stayed on the 25th floor overlooking Shimen and Beijing Roads.  The smog and overcast limits the views of the Pudong skyline, but you can barely see them on the left.

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Shanghai, especially the Puxi side, is based on a complex network of a very old road system.  Walking the back alleys is an experience in itself, but you certainly would not want to drive there, with the aggressive drivers and brutal liability issues.  Subways are fast and efficient, and we took them when going long distances across town, but for Westerners, cabs are the way to go.  In the city, they typically cost between $1 and $4 per ride.  You must have the destination written in Chinese, as very few taxi drivers speak or read anything else.  In this shot, I held my breath and did this hand-held 1/2 second exposure, as we got out of the cab to dinner.  This is one of the more pleasant areas of town in the French Concession.

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In celebration of my first international show, I stayed with the Bay Bridge VIPs at the famed Peace Hotel, built in 1929, and recently restored to its former elegance.  It is right on the Bund, across from the famed views of the skyscrapers on the Pudong side of Shanghai.  In this twilight shot, we see a massive statue of Chairman Mao, ironically, as if looking over the rampant capitalism now going on in China [correction: this is not Mao, but Chen Yi, Shanghai's first Communist mayor--thank you Jean Loh from Shanghai for pointing this out].  This is right in front of the Peace Hotel and the Shanghai Oriental Pearl or TV Tower is in the background, across the river.

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In these next three shots along the Bund, you can see the throngs of people that come here in the busy summer season.  It was around 90F degrees in the evenings.  We met several young people eager to talk with us who were from remote sections of central and western China visiting Shanghai for the first time.  Some even requested to have photos taken with us.  There is a tremendous pride by the average Chinese for the transformation of Shanghai into an international city. These shots were taken with the aid of a $2 mini tripod on the edge of the railing or against a pole.  Who says camera gear has to be expensive!

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The Peace Hotel is on the left with the green copper roof.  You could hardly ask for a better location.

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Another hotel, just down the street was the Shanghai Waldorf Astoria.  The famed Long Bar (built in 1911, celebrating its 100th anniversary) made some excellent cocktails which we enjoyed in the early evening.  Here is a view of the mezzanine above the bar with twilight coming through the skylight.

Here is a lower lobby view.

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And a pair of perfectly made cocktails in the Long Bar with that wonderful blue of twilight spilling in from the window.

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One evening on a stroll near the hotel, I stumbled on a fellow night photographer, a Chinese man with his camera and tripod taking some long exposures.  I tried to talk with him, but he spoke no English and I no Chinese.  He seemed a bit nervous, and quickly moved on.  I did a quick snapshot of him while leaning on a parked car.  It seems night shooters are everywhere nowadays.

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Late one night, I stopped to watch this group of men installing flower pots on every street lamp along the Bund.  They were working so quickly and efficiently going from pole to pole.  The next morning, hundreds were in place were there were none the day before, yet no one seemed to notice.

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Shanghai is an energetic, exploding city, so much that the government has to regulate incoming migration.  It also limits the number of cars and the issuance of driver’s licenses (which can cost thousands of dollars), and yet, General Motors Buick division sells more cars in China than they do in the US.

We were hard pressed to find signs of the old and historic, as buildings are being knocked down at a frightening pace.  I did wander into abandoned 18th and 19th century structures slated for demolition with wonderful details and patina, now occupied by squatters.  In China, all buildings are “deconstructed” and virtually all the materials are reused or recycled.  It was fascinating to watch crews of people pulling nails out of lumber and plywood and loading the wood onto waiting trucks.  There are pickers on trikes all over town that collect wood, metal, plastic and even styrofoam for recycling.  They have local processing centers all over the city that buys the material.  This makes Shanghai one of the “greenest” cities on earth.

The fashions in Shanghai are all western-casual, and it was rare to see anyone dressed in traditional Chinese garb (and then only the very old).  I first went to China in 1983, and it was so very different then, more like a third-world country.  Those days are past as China catapults into the 21st century, destined to be the largest economy in the world by the end of the decade.

After two weeks in Shanghai, we took the train on to Nanjing, where I will share some images and talk about that fascinating city in the next blog post.

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Also, I wanted to mention while I was in China, about the passing of Per Volquartz, who died in mid-July.  We had just shared emails with him on China the week before I left,  talking about contacts and ideas, as he was well loved in China.  It is a big loss of this great photographer and artist, and he will be greatly missed.  I was fortunate to get home in time to go to the memorial, where I saw many old friends and also met many new ones.  Goodbye, Per, and thanks for all you have given to the photographic community.

This week, I just got back from a whirlwind trip for the show opening in Shanghai, China, and am still working on processing the imagery from the nearly three week trip.  The next post will have some images from China, but in the mean time, I’d like to share some images shot in rural Nevada as I left the Mono Lake Night Photography Festival a few weeks ago.

As I drove out of Lee Vining and Mono Lake, I headed east to Hawthorne, NV, about a 50 mile drive.  Although this is a blog for twilight and night photography, I wanted to share a pleasing image shot on highway 167 a few miles out of Hawthorne that made it worthwhile bringing out the 4×5 camera.   The high desert was in full bloom and stretched for miles!  It is so rare to stumble on the desert in bloom, as it only lasts a couple of days.  It is always a sight to behold and appreciate.  It is hard to tell here, but there are several types of flowers blooming and they stretch in patches to the distant mountains.

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The remote town of Hawthorne has about 3000 hearty souls and is is a quirky one, as the main reason for its existence is the naval ordinance depot–at least 200 rugged miles from the nearest navy.  Of course they have a casino and numerous motels.  One of the highlights of town was the Hawthorne Naval Ordinance Museum where I photographed the many bizarre details.  It was free and filled with all sorts of bombs and torpedoes.  Strange, indeed.

I headed south on highway 95, one of the major highways in Nevada and stumbled on an abandoned factory between the towns of Kincaid and Luning.  It was about 100 feet from the highway and wide open.  It was now the home to a few pigeons, trying to stay cool in the 100 degree heat.  I wandered through the buildings with a flashlight and was surprised on how intact it was.  Since I live in a major city (L.A.), I am used to seeing places like this, but they are always locked and boarded up, and they get covered with graffiti very quickly.  This place had no graffiti whatsoever and the only vandalism I saw was a couple of broken windows.  What a nice change!  It must have been closed for several years, by the ‘patina’ on everything.  Since it was dark inside, and required a tripod and long exposures, I feel that this qualifies as “low-light shooting”.  Again, after scouting, I felt it deserved the 4×5 camera.

There was a brown stain on the whole interior of the building.  It must have been a processing facility for some sort of mineral.  I did see a stack of bags in one room, but the labels were too badly faded.  The cyan color is from daylight spilling in on these long exposures.

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I could not figure out what these slats were for, but they do give a nice texture.  I like the mix of cool and warm tones.  There were several dead birds on the floor, dessicated in the desert heat.

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In the lower floor there was this workbench and rolls of cardboard packing material covered with the desert dust.  Finding the right position for the camera/tripod was the challenge here, as this is a very confined space.  It was quite dark in here as this is a two minute exposure.

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I’ve included this exterior daytime shot to show how unmolested the buildings are.  This is one of three structures and I waited until I after I did the interior shots for the sun to move onto the side of the building with the shadows from the pipes.

I don’t know if this place is a victim of the economy or part of the boom/bust cycle that is Nevada.  Las Vegas makes the news with their hard times, but I feel the small communities are hit worse with utter economic devastation.  One night on this trip I stayed with an old buddy who lives in Reno and he told me of the major problems with that town.  In the rural areas I saw several towns that were totally shut down–the store, the eateries, the motels and gas stations were all boarded up.  These are the modern day Bodie-like ghost towns.  I wish I could have spent more time in this part of the country, but responsibilities were awaiting back home.