Tom Paiva's Night Photography Blog

Back in my January 15th blog post, I showed images shot at a major oil company’s Long Beach fuel dock.  A couple of weeks ago, I got access a second time, but knew I wanted to explore deeper into this vast tank farm rather than to stay on the dock.

This facility is very clean and tidy and a pleasure to walk around in.  This time I brought my hand truck so I could bring in a bit more gear than last time, since we cannot drive in a car.  My escort, Laura, was willing to spend more time with me–almost two precious hours.

On the way in, I wandered a bit by the dock and did the following shot.

The sun has set with the beginning of that beautiful rosy color in the eastern sky at sunset that I always enjoy here in LA, even when I’m not shooting.  I studied this maze of “vapor pipes” for a couple of minutes before I brought the camera over, looking for the right vantage point and perspective for the image I wanted to make.  I wanted to be sure if this shot was worth doing.  For those technically inclined, I used front tilt on the 4×5 camera to keep the focus from the edge of the foreground pipe to the distant tanks.  This shot would have been better a little later, but I wanted to move on to get some more shots, due to my limited time.

A multi-acre tank farm like this one is just too large to shoot in an evening.  That is why I like to come back regularly to places such as this.  I have tendency to work an area of a  hundred feet at twilight to get a nice cross section of images from the area.  In the following image, I went to a valving area, that I knew would be great at twilight and at night.  I brought my gear over and started to find the next view.

This is a monitoring station with electric pumps in the background.  Overhead mercury vapor lamps are casting the green glow along with some fluorescent tubes in the background.  The stainless steel cabinet is lit by the warm afterglow of the late afternoon light.  During this exposure, I scouted the next few shots, all within 100 feet of this shot.  I find that if you try and shoot all over the yard, you will spend too much time running about and not shooting.  My goal is to become one with the location and really concentrate on the shapes and light.  Since I  have been doing this a long time, I find I will know what the final image will look like–to an extent.  Ansel Adams called this previsualization, and it takes lots of practice and knowledge of your equipment and characteristics of the film and light.

Here we are looking between two tank farm areas.  There is another wall on the right.  The 20 foot high walls are strong enough to withstand a rupture in all the tanks to keep the fuels contained.  The base of the tank farm itself will keep spillage out of the groundwater.  In this shot there is a mixture if three different types of light sources, causing the wall to glow red, the ground to have a green cast and the spillage of light from that intense lamp facing left on the ground, that appears white.  This shot would be impossible if that bright lamp was facing the camera.

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Here is another view of that intensely bright lamp, shot about 30 feet from the shot above.  The twilight is now past and we are into the night.  You can really see the spillage from that lamp on the ground and how it lights up the moisture in the air.  Below is a third variation of this shot.

In this view you can see the separation of the two “farms”.  The light on that piece of equipment in the background is the same type and color of lamp as the “spillage” in the foreground.  There is detail on an enlargement of this shot in the bright sections, but limited by what you can see on a monitor at this resolution.

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These green vapor pipes made a nice contrast with the orange of the urban-industrial night sky.  For those who are curious, this is a transparency and I used a lot of front rise to eliminate the busyness in the foreground.  Front rise keeps the perspective correct without simply tilting the camera upwards (which would cause “keystoning” or the apparent tilting of the vertical parts).  I would have liked to compose this slightly differently, but had to work hard to hide as many of the bright lights as I could.

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On the way out, while walking by the fuel dock again, and noticed that the barges were back again that I shot back in January.  This time I used a shorter exposure, so I (hopefully) could read the names of the barges.

They are barely readable, as Alpha Boy, Best Boy and Bad Boy.  Someone at the barge company has a sense of humor!  This is a different view from the January shot, as there is a marine layer coming in making the sky appear overcast and I used a different film type and lens, but the idea was the same.  This is an example of why it is good to be able to return and reshoot the ‘same’ view, because it will never be the same…

Recently I have attained access to one of the largest recycling centers in the US here in Los Angeles.  They recycle almost anything, including home appliances, autos, big-rig trucks, buses, railroad cars and locomotives, heavy equipment and steel of all sorts.  It is a “green” business, but a multi-million dollar business just the same.  The recycled steel and other metals is loaded on ships and sent to Asia to make into everything from the automobiles to the cell phones and other consumables cherished here in the US.

I have been shooting off an on at another of their port facilities for about three years, and most of it has rarely been seen.  Some is commercial, but my personal work is the twilight/night work (is that a surprise?)  The night hides the reality of the shredded autos, broken glass and other dirty cast off bits, making the shapes and light the “art” that I do.

The commercial work is of workers and of the process itself, shot digitally during the day, but it’s the night with its harsh shadows and artificial “safety” lights that excites me.  As with most of my personal work, this series is shot in 4×5, both transparency and negative.

The environment is dirty and dusty, but they work hard to keep the dust down by hosing down the huge stacks of steel.  The facility is many acres, so we travel with the equipment on a golf cart or small pick-up truck.  My clothes are always so filthy at the end of a night’s shooting.  In my younger years I worked in environments like this, including being a welder, so I can relate to the workers.

As usual, I arrive in the daytime so I know where to be at twilight, scouting as much as I can to know where to shoot.  This time of year, the meal break time is just after twilight, when the whole place comes to a standstill with equipment just shut down where they are.  At this time I can get shots in the middle of the busiest parts of the facility.  Otherwise, there are trucks and heavy equipment running all over the place and you really have to watch where you walk.  At this facility, I am required to be escorted by the safety supervisor or one of his immediate subordinates–for good reason.  You know to freeze when you hear an air horn blast from a vehicle that has tires that are over 7 feet tall hauling many tons of steel.  They are so huge, I can literally walk under these “trucks”.

Here we see a Cat with a powerful claw that can lift more than a ton of shredded steel in a scoop.  The mountains of steel in the background are over 40 foot high.  Note the different color of the different types of scrap steel.  The ambient twilight mixed with the artificial light give an interesting mix of color.  I hope your monitor can see the subtly of the colors.  I have “hidden” a huge lamp behind the arm on the left.  You can see the reflections of the lamp on the wet concrete, making the “claw” stand out.

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In this view of the yard, there is still a touch of twilight in the sky.  The 4 story building and crane give a sense of scale to the mountain of steel on the right, and this is one of many mountains of steel.  The material in the building is the “soft bits” (seats, carpeting,  headliner, etc.) left over from shredding the cars.  It smells and looks nasty close up.  I was told they use this as a cap for landfills.  Very little goes to waste.

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This nasty looking piece of equipment is a portable shear.  It can cut steel such as railroad rails.  The head can be articulated into almost any position.  The “business end” looks like the beak of a raptor.  In this shot, done during the mealtime break, I carefully hid the bright light of the facility behind.  It is a five minute exposure, and during the exposure a crane started to work on the left in the background, giving the orange blur.

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This shot was made on the harbor side of the yard, where is was a lot darker than the rest of the facility.  Exposures were 2-3 times longer, but the urban night sky came out well.    Note that I cropped a section of this image for the current blog masthead.  The side lighting helped create the fine detail in this image.

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In this view we are looking into a sorting area, where there are various stacks of non-ferrous metals and the “fluff” from the shredding of auto seats, carpeting, headliner, etc.  It is quite dusty in this building, with its many conveyor systems.  I did one shot in this room, and the camera was covered in dust from the 10-15 minutes I was in there.  The plastic sheeting is to keep the dust down.  I strategically placed the camera to block the brightest lights and then used front shift to keep the door opening straight.

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Many people who know my work think I do not photograph people.  On the contrary, I shoot them all the time (there are plenty of examples on my website).  For personal portraiture, like these shots of Ricardo, the safety manager and my escort, I like to use the view camera–even at night.

For those technically oriented, for 4×5 portraiture, I typically use my 210mm lens wide open at f5.6 with Kodak’s Portra 400 negative film.  In this day and age, I am thankful that Kodak still makes a higher speed film in both 4×5 and 8×10 and it is designed for portraiture, with softer tones.  This film is a little more grainy, but that is more of an issue with smaller formats like 35mm.  This extra speed allows for a one second exposure at f5.6 in most industrial areas.  You can’t expect a standing subject to stay still for more than a second.  I always keep a couple of holders loaded with this film, just in case.  This night, I shot one sheet of four different views of Ricardo, and these two are my favorites.

Recently, I have built a new camera/lens setup that I intend to use for night 4×5 portraiture, with an ultra fast lens that is six times brighter than f5.6.  There are a few more adjustments and finishing touches still needed on the camera and will start using it soon.  Stay in touch…

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This week I have been continuing with my ‘closed auto dealership project’ (see last week’s blog post) and went shooting with Tom Johnson, an LA photographer, who shoots many street portraits, among other things.  He wrote a nice blog post on the evening shooting in Carson with me.  Have a look:  http://tommjohnson.blogspot.com/2011/02/my-evening-with-master.html .  I am flattered that he calls me a ‘master’, but he did learn a lot that evening.

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You might have noticed that I have changed to a twice-monthly blog instead of weekly.  This will enable me to have a little more time to write a more narrative and (hopefully) more enjoyable read.  Comments are always welcome.

About a year ago, I noticed the huge number of auto dealerships that have closed, mainly because of the economy.  I saw them in Phoenix, and San Diego, but since I live in the Los Angeles area, that would be my subject–and there are plenty out there.

At first, I shot during the day taking a few digital scouting shots, but then realized there was more to this story.  The large swaths of land, especially in urban areas, now vacant, might not revert back to auto dealerships.  Once this land is redeveloped, urban car dealerships might become a rare breed.

I recently read that the average American car is the oldest it has ever been at 10 years–coincidentally the age of my own car.  The impact of thousands of jobs lost both locally and nationally, at the dealer level along with manufacturers and suppliers, prompted me to make a statement and I decided to shoot it with the 8×10 view camera.  It gave me highly detailed, but depressing images that are a sign of our times.  I never liked taking photos of homeless people for the same reason.

So I did that next logical step and decided to shoot them at twilight and at night–but still shooting it in 8×10.  Oddly, I have rarely shot 8×10 at night because of the physical and technical challenges and the long set up and exposure times.  Like anything else, when it works, it all seems worth it.

It started as a daunting task, carrying around the 35 pound camera and tripod at night, with my limited selection of lenses, but after the first few exposures, the project has started to gel.  When you set up an 8×10 camera on the street, it definitely attracts attention!

Many of my favorite contemporary photographers, including Stephen Shore, Joel Sternfeld, Andrew Moore and Joel Meyorwitz shoot 8×10, frequently in low light situations, and now I know why.  The tonality of the negatives is quite remarkable, so much that I can get color out of the urban sky at night and still have details in the light fixtures, like the one below.  There is still some light in the sky in this twilight shot that gives the pink cast on the building.

Normally, it is very difficult to shoot directly into a light source like this, but the simple prime (non-zoom) lens and the tonal scale of the 8×10 negative held all the detail.

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In this twilight shot, the “Showroom” door and “No Trespassing” sign together caught my attention.  The lush green foliage growing up through the asphalt shows that Mother Nature is trying to take this location back.

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The back of this dealership is actually a powder blue, with a mercury vapor lamp as the main light.  Note the gradation of blue in the sky and the faint light streak of an airplane flying by.  The texture in this image is quite remarkable enlarged.  Unfortunately, viewing these on a computer monitor at this resolution only give an inkling of what is there.

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This is a different view of the same building.  The deterioration happens quickly, even here in LA without the rain, snow and ice.  The subtle tones in the colors make the image.  Both this and the next shot are 30 minute exposures, to get the depth of field throughout the image.

This is my favorite image from this series to date because of the color and smooth tone.  It is a night shot, not twilight which it appears to be.  There is a single bare bulb in the back of the alley, just out of view.  There is a mercury vapor street lamp in the foreground, giving the green cast.  I liked this image, but had to shoot it over 3 different nights to get it the way I wanted.  For those who need to know, it is a half hour exposure at f45 with my 210mm G-Claron lens on Fuji NPL color negative film.

The local police stopped by during this exposure and questioned me.  As they got out of their cruiser, I told them I thought the alley was beautiful because of the light.  They looked at each other and gave me the look as though I was a bit crazy.  When I told them this is what I do, they drove off.  I didn’t mind, as it helped pass the time of the exposure…

In January while driving yet again to the San Francisco Bay Area, I stopped in the late afternoon in the Valley town of Gustine.  I’m fascinated with the small farm towns in rural California.  You might recall a couple of months ago I wrote about this town and showed images of the agricultural section of town.

This time, I purposely planned my trip to arrive around sunset to shoot some twilight/night shots and had my 4×5 camera with me.  In the winter, the Valley is know for its dense overcast and Tule fog, making it cold and damp.  This evening was typical.

I rolled through town looking for an interesting place to stop and set up.  It was Friday night, and the cruisers were starting to drive around.  Some of the local farm hands were sitting in front of the convenience store next door drinking from brown paper bags.  There was quite a few people at the laundromat next door, bored to tears and I was giving them something to look at.  There was a woman sitting on a bench in front of the laundromat talking to herself the whole time I was shooting.

I scouted the area to figure out what I was going to shoot and in which order.  Things change, people come and go, and occasionally I get hassled by the local police, so one has to plan carefully, especially when shooting large format.  It’s hard to hide a tripod.

In this first shot, the sun has set, and you can see the dense overcast.  The advantage of the overcast is that it saturates the colors, especially on this highly saturated Kodak E100VS transparency film.  That turquoise colored cinder block car wash really caught my eye and I knew it would photograph well.  I knew the fluorescent lamps of the car wash would add more green to the turquoise.

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In this image, I used a magenta filter to balance for the green flourescent lighting.  It turned the sky magenta, but we took the liberty to de-saturate it in Photoshop.  The side lighting from the lamp coming in from the upper left give a nice texture to the brick wall.  In the orginal transparency, you can read all the fine print on the washing instruction placard.  The exposure is about 30 seconds.

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The dense overcast gave about a half hour of shooting twilight, which is much appreciated when shooting large format.  The long exposures quickly use up the “magic hour” light.  I let the fluorescent lamp burn out to get the tone in the sky and what the lamp is illuminating.  Exposure is about one minute.

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In this shot, the sky is quite dark, but I managed to get tonality out of it because of the dense overcast (and a little bit of dodging in Photoshop).  The 4×5 transparency has a lot of detail, and we can pull out quite a bit from the dark shadows.  All the lights are fluorescent except in the niche where there is a sodium vapor lamp.  Exposure is about 2 minutes.  I was lucky to get what I did, as all of a sudden several cars came in to get washed for Friday night.  That is part of why you have to plan your shots to get the ones you really want.  Situations change.  I’ll be visiting this town again…

This past week I have been very busy, and I was in Phoenix over the weekend, so am posting this a little late.  Back in December, on a drive from San Francisco to Los Angeles, I stopped along the interstate just before twilight at an unnamed exit.  In this part of the San Joaquin Valley, most of the far-between exits are for farm roads that connect the few rural farm towns.  Not one car came by for the 20+ minutes I had the camera in the middle of the road.

It was dense overcast that day, so the twilight would be longer than usual.  Since there was no one around, I set up the view camera for a couple of shots.  I wanted to show the wide open spaces, so shot a little wider.  The subject itself was the lonely road and sky.

The simple graphics of the double yellow line, the seams and white edge keeps your eye moving around the image.  This image has lots of interesting details when viewed full size on a monitor.  A print of 16×20 or larger would also show the subtle light cone from the lamps in the high humidity (almost fog).

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Here is a vertical view shot from a different perspective about 50 feet away.  The careful placement of the camera is critical for a successful composition.  I think this one also works.

The technique of finding the right composition is different when shooting with a view camera as compared to a camera with a viewfinder (or chimp screen).  You cannot really walk around looking at the ground-glass of a view camera on a tripod.  What I do is simply walk around to find the correct perspective and balance of foreground-to background.  At than point, I bring the tripod to that location and then choose the lens for the amount image I want to show or not show.  I can rotate the back to make the decision of a horizontal or vertical image.  I have a wide range of lenses to help me get what I want.  Yes, it takes time, but with practice, it becomes fast and intuitive.  I was not taught this back in art school, but figured it out on my own over the years.  It was probably done this way in the early years of photography, too.  It is important to note that the lens does not change the perspective, but it’s the placement of the camera.  My selection of lenses is carefully chosen, that took years to work out.  Some of the lenses I’ve had over 20 years.

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In late November, while working with a student on location about the finer points of night photography with the view camera, I did one shot at twilight while he was setting up.  This image is shot at the beach at Playa del Rey, near the end of the runways at LAX.  These stainless steel columns are simply shower heads.  I have shot here many times before, since it is only five miles from my house, but not in 4×5.  I find I enjoy going back to interesting locations repeatedly to experience the change and note how the light of sunset or the difference between at clear evening vs. an overcast one.  Note the different feel of the skies of this image compared to the ones above.  There is always a new view to be had.

The subtleties in tones on the brushed stainless catches the surrounding light, making for some interesting patterns.  I liked it so much that I have cropped a tighter section to use at the blog header.