Industrial New Jersey

For those of you who missed my show on Loss:  The LA Auto Dealership series, it is moving to M56 Gallery, 3764 9th Street, Riverside, CA; 951-204-1451.  It is a block from the California Museum of Photography, which is definitely worth seeing.  Here is a link for the gallery.  The opening is on Saturday, June 8th, 530pm-800pm and the work will be on exhibit until June 30th.  Hope to see you there at the opening.

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A couple of weeks ago, I went to New Jersey to shoot some industrial landscapes at night.  NJ has a massive industrial infrastructure, to be sure.  Much of it is old; much older than the industrial facilities in the West.  I stayed at my night-shooting friend Kay’s house in South Orange and she shot with me every night I was there.  Here is a tiny selection of what we explored.

The night I arrived, we shot at the Port of Newark which was surprising open.  We wandered in huge scrapyards and among rail cars.  This was the last shot I did, as the light on the rail car is from the spotlight from the port police vehicle.  The textures and light on the four tanks was what attracted me to this shot area.  We weren’t able to get closer as we were told to vacate the area immediately.

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The next day we explored several cities to see what might be good at night.  Several had been cleaned up quite a bit since the last time I was in NJ for a commercial shoot.  The above shot was made in a remote area of Jersey City.  I liked the mix of the last of the light with the modern city in the background.  I shot this with shallow focus to highlight the texture of the fence and sign.

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In Orange, we wandered into a burned out warehouse that was still being used for storage of some sort for a commercial kitchenware company.  The combination of mixed lighting made for some interesting colors.  The yellow building in the background is empty and abandoned.  It was very dark in this 6 minute exposure.  While were were shooting in the shadows, a couple of men were arguing on the street.  The cops came by and broke them up.  No one ever saw us, even though we were just 50 feet away.

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Typically, I rarely shoot graffiti, but sometimes it adds to an image.  This 100+ year old factory in Harrison looks as though it has been abandoned for many years.  “Low Clearance”, indeed.

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This side-tracked locomotive looks like it’s been here for quite a while.  The dappled light on it is from security lights from the factory across the street coming through the trees.  It looks like it was “painted with light”, but it’s all available light.  That is the new Freedom Tower in Lower Manhattan on the left.  Manhattan is so close, yet a world away from this part of Jersey City.

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This area of Jersey City had much to shoot, and we parked the rental car and shot for a couple of hours.  The above forlorn power pole looks like it’s towards the end of it’s life!  The primary light is mercury vapor, corrected to neutral light, causing the sky to go to magenta.  I actually desaturated the magenta quite a bit as it looked cartoonish.

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Two blocks from the previous shot was this closed industrial administration building.  The shadows from the trees on the facade give it a mysterious feel.  The image was a lot darker than appears in this two minute exposure.  The wet man-hole cover is reflecting the fluorescent light from the entrance lighting.  Trucks were rumbling by, their drivers watching and wondering what we were up to.

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On another night, we were shooting in Kearny, where Kay was interested in shooting a huge abandoned power plant.  I was shooting more abstract images, like the one above.  As I shot this, ‘Kearny’s best’ (local police) came by and said we couldn’t shoot from the street of any infrastructure in the name of ‘homeland security’.  They took our names and told us to leave.  Technically, we were within our rights to shoot from a public street.  Protesting is useless in the NY/NJ area.

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We solved the access issue, as Kay knew a way to get to the other side of the Passaic River.  The above shot is of part of the closed power plant.  I shot it tight with a longer lens, as ugly security lamps were on either side of this image.  The interesting color palette of mixed lighting on the old brick facade makes the image work.

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We were shooting from a city bus repair terminal to get this shot of the Pulaski Skyway.  These three crooked signs, that say nothing, seemed so lonely at the end of the road.

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Even though it was early spring, these bare trees make it feel like winter.  In the foreground are part of the Meadowlands, a natural estuary, made famous from all the bodies that get dumped there in NJ crime movies and TV.  This area is being reclaimed and being turned into a park.  The Pulaski Skyway from a totally different view than the one above seems to be echoed by the spindly bare trees and their reflection.  Spill light from the urban area illuminates the reeds and other foliage in this 2 minute exposure.