Night Photography Blog by Tom Paiva

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!

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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!

.

.

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

.

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.

.

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

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

<<<<<—–>>>>>

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

In the last blog post, I showed three images from Bodie that were taken late in the evening (after 10pm)—out of the five set ups I shot. The reason for doing so few views was that the digital camera was busy from twilight until almost 10 pm that evening doing a time-lapse sequence. Here is a video version made from the approximately 400 individual images looking south on Green Street.

View this at full size, and you can see all the different night photographers popping flash strobes and using flashlights to paint with light like I did with the “Coffin” shot in the last blog post.  The images were shot 20 seconds apart and are being viewed at 12 images per second.  It is ironic that a park ranger picked this evening to move into his new digs (hence the U-Haul trailer).  At the time, it looked like he was ruining the shot, but actually, it adds interest and gives more to observe (as he unloads the trailer).  You can watch the full moon rise and the light change from twilight through the “blue hour” to darkness and see the shadows and stars move with the moon.  If you look closely, you can see the space station quickly arc across the sky.

The guy with the silver “bag” over his head in the early frames is me making one of my 4×5 views while the digital camera was doing its thing.   I did five twilight/night views with the 4×5 that evening and here are four of them.

The immensity of this generator intrigued me as it was about 8 feet high.  The contrast of the weathered buildings behind with the bright light of the setting sun behind me reflecting off the window adds interest.  For those in the know, I swung the front standard of the 4×5 to keep things in focus. The rising full moon with the afterglow of sunset gives a bit of warmth to this image.   Even this time of year (the summer solstice full moon), the bleakness of the area and chill at night makes you appreciate the ruggedness of the people who lived here.

.

Here we have a classic Bodie view that shows the weathered texture of the 1880s ghost town.  Twilight really saturates the subtle colors.  It is darker than this image tells us, as this is a one minute exposure.  It is probably difficult to tell, but there is a subtle purple-pink color in the twilight sky.  Yes, those are patches of snow (in mid-June) in the background, as Bodie is over 8000 feet in elevation.

.

Being the urban guy, I was attracted to one of the few lights (from a park ranger’s quarters) in this “ghost town” as it adds life to the bleak deep blue darkness.  If you cover up the lit window with your hand, you can see this would be a much weaker image. This is a 10 minute exposure at the tail end of the fading light.  There was an intense blue light at the beginning and it was totally dark by the end of the exposure.  That blue intensity adds to that late evening feeling.  If you look closely, you can see a red glow on the weathered wood on the far left from the lit window.  This is the shot I was making during the time-lapse video.

.

In the last blog, I did a shot of the coffin through this window with the digital camera, painting with light from the side windows on either side (see it here).  After doing that shot, I decided to do one more 4×5 view.  Another night shooter, Chip, was shooting close-in from the window on the right.  Using my best “night photography group etiquette,” I cropped tightly, as not to bother, or see him or his camera (and to stay out of the way of his exposure, too).  The lens was covered during his painting with light.  The light on the coffin was guessed with the help of ‘chimp’ screen from the digital view made earlier.  I figured about 20-30 minutes were needed to try and get some detail on the window frame from from the full moon spill (this side of the building was in deep shadow from the moonlight).  It ended up being a 25 minute exposure.

What I really like about this shot is the rich tones and textures which I hope you can see on your monitor.  The mystery of this image draws you in to see deep inside the funeral parlor.  There is a lot of subtle detail in this image.  The blue tones on the wooden window frame and caulking were more colorful than expected but really added to the mood and contrast.  Very little Photoshop work was done on this image other than basic color balance and density correction.  This is so different from the digital image and is a good case on why I still shoot film—for that unexpected “different” look.

This post has gone live a bit early, because I leave Saturday for the show opening in Shanghai, China, and will be gone for almost three weeks.  I won’t be doing a blog post until I return, but will be checking email, so comments are always welcome.  When I get back I’m sure there will be many interesting experiences to share…

Last week Lance Keimig, along with Scott Martin and Tim Baskerville held a Night Photography Festival at Mono Lake, CA in honor of the Nocturnes 20th anniversary.  It was a big success with warm balmy weather, making the night shooting that much more pleasant.  There was even an evening at Bodie, the California State Park ‘ghost town’.

There were 10 guest lecturers including Russel Brown from Adobe with all his great tips on processing night images in Photoshop.  My contributing lecture was talking about the how and why of using the large format camera at night.

The film I shot came out well, but I have not had time to scan it yet, so will share with you a few of the digital images I shot over two nights.

Andy Frazer, Jill Waterman and I drove up highway 120 towards the Yosemite entrance at nearly 10,000 feet (3000+ meters) in elevation.  Tioga Pass was still closed from the heavy winter due to snow and possible avalanches.  This shot is one of the semi-frozen lakes.  The reflection off the water is moonlight in this 8 minute exposure.  We scouted this location in the daytime and the temperature was in the mid-70s, but at night it dipped into the low 30s.  The lakes were melting quickly, as the night shots showed much more water than the day versions.

.

We were shooting about a quarter of a mile from where the road was closed, and just before this exposure was done, we all were surprised when a car came down from the pass.  I ran to the camera and stopped the exposure as it approached.  The headlights reflecting off the roadway and reflecting off the water running off the rocks on the right gave this image interest.  Without the car, this image would be weaker, but at the time, I thought he was ruining it!

.

The following night, much of the group went to Bodie, one of the highlights of the festival. In this shot of a store, there were two very dim lights (maybe a few watts) hanging inside.  I positioned myself to hide one of them behind the post on the right.  I know this image would loose something in the dark back of the room, so I painted with light with an LED flashlight through a rear window on the left for about 90 seconds on this 4 minute exposure.  I feel the blue light adds a bit of “life” to the image and balances the warm glow in the interior.

.

This is the side window of the funeral parlor at Bodie.  You could see the coffin inside, but it needed some light.  I went on either end of the building and painted with light for about 90 seconds on the left and an additional 30 seconds from the right to give the “modeling” effect on the coffin.  This side of the building was in deep shadow, so the exposure was 10 minutes to give some texture.  If you look closely, you can see the reflections of the other buildings in the windows lit by moonlight.  I carefully placed my camera in front of the wooden section between them so it would not show.

.

Virtually all of the buildings in town were dark, only lit by moonlight.  One exception was Bodie’s museum.  I am attracted to artificial light and how it interacts with the night scene.  If there was no light on this building, I wouldn’t have shot it, as there are dozens of buildings with no lights.  There was a lone light bulb over the door, giving some great contrast and texture of the false-front 1880s building, but very bright compared to the moonlight.  This is a combination of two exposures combined in Photoshop with masking to retain the detail on the door while still showing the night sky and moonlit background.

.

At this point, it was pushing 1:00am, our time to pack it in, as the ranger wanted to go home.  The museum building held my interest, and I did this more abstract image of the false-front lit by the spill light from the bare bulb over the door.  The warm glow contrasts with the moonlit night sky and star trails in this 6  minute exposure.

There were many images to be made in Bodie at night, but time was limited to about 4 1/2 hours, and we each had to work around the other 25 people and their tripods, flashes and flashlights.  There is a certain etiquette when shooting as a group at night, and most everyone respected each other’s space.

The workshop environment is one that educates, inspires and motivates, and this festival was no different.  I’m sure there were many good images made this week.

On the last blog post, I mentioned up-coming workshops, and forgot to mention the San Francisco workshop I will be doing with Tim Baskerville on September 9-11.  For more information, see the website or contact me via email.

This blog post I wanted to mention a few items coming up over the next few months.  Here are some upcoming workshops:

=> The first will be at Mono Lake, CA, where I will be a guest lecturer for the Night Photography Festival on June 12-15, speaking on the 13th.

=> Andy Frazer and I will be hosting an LA Night Photography workshop the weekend of August 26-28.  We will shoot at various Los Angeles locations, learning about shooting at night in the urban environment, including getting access to an industrial area closed to the public.  This was a big hit last year when Andy and I did this workshop.

=> This October 7-9, Tim Baskerville and I will be leading a workshop at one of my favorite places–Death Valley.  It is a marvelous place to shoot, because of the remote area and lack of urban lights.  The fall has the best weather and it will be during the full moon.  For more details see this link.

The most significant news item is an upcoming international exhibit of my work on the Bay Bridge project shot in China in 2009 of the 4×5 views.  This is a group show on the bridge manufacturing at the prestigious Minsheng Art Museum in Shanghai where my work will be printed to 30×40 inches and larger.  I will be at the opening in Shanghai on July 10th.   Below, I will share and talk about some of the twilight and night images chosen by the museum curator for this exhibit.

This image has become the iconic one of from the China series and was used as a postcard for promotion of a show of this work in Oakland, CA.  This shot was more difficult that it appears, because between the roadway section and the camera was a very heavily used roadway for equipment.  The exposure was 15 minutes, but it took almost a half  hour to make the shot, having to cover the lens as equipment drove by.  Their lights would have ruined the shot.  I also had to lower the camera a bit to avoid the bright lamp from showing over the top–and of course choose a location not to be in the way of the heavy equipment.  Note the movement of the crane on the left which was not noticed at the time I made the shot.

.

This shot was done at twilight of the roadbed.  The white sections jutting out from the roadbed will be the supports for the bike/pedestrian lane that will run between Oakland and Yerba Buena Island.  There is a green mercury vapor lamp high overhead on the left lighting the foreground.  The company that made the bridge roadway (and tower sections), ZPMC, on Changxing Island in the Yangtze River outside of Shanghai.  They also make 80% of the world’s shipping cranes like the red ones in the background.  There were dozens of these in various states of construction along the waterfront.

.

One of the most difficult problems of shooting in a very busy industrial environment like this is avoiding the bright working lamps.  They are almost everywhere for safety’s sake.  I had to find just the right position to block those very bright lights, while not getting in the way of workers.  Note the different light colors on the left (mercury vapor) and right (sodium vapor).  These huge rollers cradled the bridge tower sections so they could be turned for welding and other work.

It was surprising how much work the Chinese did each night.  Having worked in the trades on graveyard shifts myself many years ago, the efficiency is typically around a third of the day shift.  Not at this factory.  The Chinese have two 12-hour shifts per day and the night shift seems to get as much work done as the day.

.

In this shot, you can see one of the vast buildings made just for this bridge project.   What you see here are several of the massive tower sections in various stages of manufacture.  This was shot during a break time, and you can (barely) see the lights of the inspector’s flashlights inspecting the welds, at center.  This was shot from a roadway section shown earlier.  The red banner across the center section says in both Chinese and English, “Regulations is Glorious, Working Recklessly is Disgraceful”.  The sentiment is there but the translation into English didn’t quite make it!

.

Here is a ground based view of same building above, but on a different evening.  Note how the sliding doors are open differently.  The overlapping lamps from both mercury vapor (on top) and sodium vapor (the red on the bottom) and the slight greenish cast on the interior of the structure make for some interesting colors.  Those doors are blue.  It is very hard to tell, but there is a subtle green rim lighting on the scooter in the lower center.  In industrial settings like this, you have to embrace the wild mixture of colors.

.

Here we see a different roadbed section.  The lighting from inside the structure is from fluorescent light tubes.  These cast a green light but I balanced them with the (similarly) green lamps of the overall mercury vapor lamps.  You can see a bit of red in the lower part of the image from the stray light of sodium vapor lamps.  To give a sense of scale, each of these roadbeds will handle 6 lanes of traffic across San Francisco Bay along with a bike/pedestrian lane attached to the south side of the westbound lanes.

On the 2009 Shanghai trip, I shot all day for 8 days and many nights, sometimes working 12+ hours per day, making about 100-4×5 views and thousands of digital images (more for documentation).  One of the problems about shooting at night, was that the last ferry off the island was two hours before sunset.  For 4 of the nights, I got a room at the company hotel for workers that was very spartan, but that enabled me to shoot as late as I wanted, one night until 2am.  That was no easy feat when I had started at 9am.  Also, I had to carry my 4×5 camera and lenses, tripod, and other equipment, including the digital camera gear for the long distances and climbing to get the best vantage points.  The ZPMC facility is so large that it has its own bus system.  On my last day in Shanghai, I bought a one hour foot massage for just a few dollars, and I sure did need it!

After the images were processed when I got back stateside, it all became worth it…

A few weeks ago, one of my railroad contacts gave me a heads up on an upcoming train that was coming to San Pedro from Oakland on the way to New Orleans.  It was a road trip for three rock bands, doing one night stands in several cities on the way to New Orleans.

The promo company hired several rail cars from the 50s and 60s for sleeping accommodations and the train was pulled by two Amtrak locomotives.  It was an interesting way to promote the concerts.

Doing what I do, I got access to the railroad rail area (thanks, Don) and had access to the train during the concert next door in San Pedro to shoot at twilight and at night.  Security was tight.  It was nice being serenaded by the bands, Mumford and Sons, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, and Old Crow Medicine Show.  These are not bands that I knew, but it made nice background music along with the cheers of the audience.  For more info on what the tour was about, check this out their link.

This first shot is of the rear of the train, with the svelte tapering of the end dome car.  The neon “California Zephyr” is a classy touch.  The red tail lights were so intense in this twilight shot, that they glowed off the shiny rails, almost as though they were painted red.  There was a magenta glow in the sunset over my right shoulder, causing the warm glow.

.

In this twilight shot the cool blue glow of the evening is evident.  This is from a transparency, and it picked up that complementary blue and yellow color mix, reflecting off the shiny stainless steel siding.  On this shoot, we got there almost an hour early to scout out the locations, compose and mark the spot.  That is the only way to get the number of shots I get in 4×5 at twilight in the few minutes available.  Thanks to Pierce for helping me carry my gear to move quickly.

.

The following shot may look similar to the above one, but it is actually shot about 50 feet away.  It is a very different perspective, this time using a slight wide angle lens (vs. a longer lens for the above shot).  I like being able to see inside the rail car, along with the glow from the spill light on the step.  Note the red glow from the tail lights.

.

In this view, it is now completely dark, and (unfortunately) they put on some portable lights for security, and were difficult to shoot around.  This was unexpected, but we managed.  This is a classic example of the importance of camera placement.  Six inches in any direction would have made the glaring portable mercury vapor lamps flaring into the lens, spoiling the shot.  The light spilling under the train is a nice touch, and you can see the whole train in this shot.  What complicated matters, was that the rail just out of view to the left was a “live” track with streetcars coming by.  When the railroad company came by to move us at least 20 feet away (we were about six feet away), we had to plead with them to wait another two minutes to finish this 8 minute exposure.  They stood behind us and let us, and the camera, do its thing.

.

I wanted another, higher view to see the trees and the light through the dome, so we packed up and got access to a parking area for the next, and final shot.  You can see the live track in the foreground of this view.  Again, camera placement was critical in this shot because if those intense lights were squarely in the rear three windows, it would have blown it out to white.

.

Everyone loves a classic old train, and I was lucky enough to tour the inside of this rail car with the owner, Burt.  They travel the county on tours and you can ride them pulled by Amtrak.  For more info, see their website.

Before I share some new images, I’d like to mention that last week I  had a chance to go to a lecture and meet one of the key contemporary influences of my photography back in the 80s, Richard Misrach.  He is a long time 8×10 photographer and is also one of the early modern color night photographers back in the 70s.  In the Q+A session, when asked who his early influences were, the first person he mentioned was Roger Minick, who wooed him away from the sciences (his college major) into photography in the 70s.

Out of the dozen books he has done, one of my favorites is “Desert Cantos”, published in 1987 and really has what some would call mundane, but I think are iconic views of the desert.  His forced, yet deliberate composition with the 8×10 is most evident in this book.  This is the book I brought with me for him to personalize and sign, which he did.

The highlight of the evening was his slide show (yes, a slide show, not a Powerpoint presentation) that showed a chronology and some of his early night work from the 70s in the bayous of Alabama what he now calls Cancer Alley.  They were beautiful and surreal with the heavy humidity and ground fog.  I had never seen them before, as they had never been published.

Misrach delves into his chosen subjects and shoots prolifically.  For example, he shot over 350 8×10 views of the “desert fires” series.  When he went to New Orleans to shoot the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, he dropped what he was doing, drove from the Bay Area and actually lived in his VW camper in the wastelands for three months and shot over 1000 8×10 views(!) for his latest book “Destroy This Memory”.  Dedication, indeed!

Afterwards, I got a chance to tell him that I also studied with Minick in the 80s and that night photography is one of my strongest photographic passions.  When I said I still shoot 4×5 and 8×10 for my personal work, all he could do is smile and say “There is nothing like what a large format negative can give you, is there?”

The lecture left me truly inspired.  With that said, this week I am going to show some of my recent 8×10 work on the “Abandoned LA Auto Dealerships” series.

This former dealership is in Long Beach, and what attracted me to it was the 60s Googie architecture.  It is a small location that I can see a dealer outgrowing.  No one in the area could remember what company was here, as it’s been closed for years.  These images were shot over two evenings, and are not necessarily in chronological order.

This view shows the exaggerated roof-line, typical of the Googie style.  This is a night shot about 6 minutes (with just a touch of light in the sky), so the brightly lit gas station across the street is quite bright, but still readable.  The exact placement of the bent telephone pole in the window took a while to set up.

.

I wanted to play up the wild angles of the structure, so I shot almost all of these with wide angle lenses.  This is a twilight shot that is about angles and tangents.  Working with the 8×10 truly slows you down to create the images you really want, by studying the subject and composing carefully.  When the cost is $15-$20 for each sheet (film and processing), that also makes you work judiciously.

.

This is a reverse angle to the one above, shooting towards the west, where there is still a touch of light in the sky. I left the rebate (edge) from the 8×10 holder to show how tight I composed this image.

.

In this night view, I’m showing the wonderful early 60s sign with the oval that I’m guessing said “Ford”.  It is obvious how the building and sign shapes worked together.  This image is lit by the shoe outlet store across the street, with its bright neon and a sodium vapor street lamp.

.

Here is a tight image with just the sign in focus.  Select focus is easy to do with large format, especially 8×10.  It is overall deep focus that can be difficult, especially at night, as the exposures can go into the hours.  There is so much detail in this image, that you can actually see the writing on the fluorescent tubes…

.

This is my favorite image from this dealership, after shooting two nights, making just 10 views–and one sheet of each, at that.  It is a 30 minute exposure (I had planned it to be 15-20 minutes, but got carried away chatting on the cell phone).  The extra exposure really brought out the detail in the shadows on the ground.  Note the detail of the weeds growing in the cracks in the asphalt.  This is lit from the light spill of the shoe store and gas station across the wide four lane street.  It is much brighter that it actually was to the naked eye, as there are no working lights on the property.  The long exposure enabled me to get some tonality out of the night sky, too.

I have shot about 6 abandoned dealerships, and am always looking for more.  If anyone knows of any empty, abandoned auto dealerships in the LA area, please let me know by emailing me.  A recent article in the LA Times mentioned that about 25% of the closed dealerships over the past couple of lean years have been taken over by other brands, especially in prime locations.  Things change quickly.

As many of you might know, I have been shooting the construction of the new Eastern Span of the San Francisco Bay Bridge for the past two and a half years.  Because of the monumentality and historic significance of this project, early on I decided to shoot it in large format 4×5.  As with most of my personal work, I have been shooting at twilight and at night for the most dramatic shots, but am also shooting during the day.

In the beginning, it was difficult to gain access and to explain that I was shooting the Bay Bridge as a personal, art project.  It took many phone calls to get access and I am still escorted each time I shoot because of the inherent danger of the location.  Anything can go wrong and it is important to have someone along.  I had to take safety classes, too.

Usually, I shoot in nice weather in SF, with the occasional, yet ubiquitous fog, but this last month there were heavy rains.  Shooting large format in the rain is a much greater challenge than digital (see the last post).  Again, keeping rain off the front lens element is the most important issue, as it will lead to distorted, unusable images.

We shot from locations such as welding tents, a covered porch and under an umbrella when nothing else was available.

From a covered porch, I shot this view of the temporary steel structure for a new roadway section.  The rain was quite heavy at this point, scattering the light.  The new tower is visible in the background on the left.  What appealed to me was the reflections on the wet steel pipes.  This is a twilight shot, but it is difficult to tell because of the heavy rain.

.

In this detail shot of some of the 100+ foot tall (and about 2 foot in diameter) wet pipes, the cyan color from mercury vapor lights mixed with some sodium vapor light (the reddish tone) enlivens the shot.  The Port of Oakland is in the background with the dense overcast, rainy night sky.  I was shooting under a tree in this shot to keep out of most of the heavy rain to create this 20 minute exposure.

.

In this 20 minute exposure in the rain, I had to use an umbrella.  My arms got quite fatigued keeping the rain off the lens while at the same time making sure the umbrella did not show it the shot and being sure not bump the camera or tripod.  The reflections off the pavement and material adds a dimension not seen on a dry evening.  My escort, John, kept an eye out for construction worker traffic that comes around this hairpin curve.  I covered the lens when cars went by.

The camera was quite wet all through, but it simply dried out overnight when I left it set up and all was fine.  There are no electronics in a view camera…

.

The following night, we climbed up to the roadway section on top of the steel pipes in the previous three shots.  Bart, my escort, counted 23 flights of stairs to get up there.  Carrying the view camera tripod, lenses, accessories and film holders gave us a good work out!

In this shot at twilight, we are looking west and can see the tunnel on Yerba Buena Island.  You can see the taillights of the westbound traffic on the temporary structure.  It was a challenge walking up the ~20 degree slope with the camera, tripod and film, especially since it had a dusting of sand-blasting glass beads (it was like walking on ball bearings!)  One of the tripod legs was at about 2 feet and the others were extended about 5 feet for this shot.

This is one of several images made from this roadbed section and is my favorite.  It is now nighttime and this is a 30 minute exposure, lit with ambient light from the overcast sky (fortunately no rain this night).  Because of the very long exposure (to get the depth of field through the whole image with a longer focal length lens) the tower construction lights are quite bright.  In the background are the lights of Berkeley and Oakland.  This structure is the mold for a major concrete pour and the actual roadbed will be about 20 feet above this floor.

It was the lights coming through the rebar that made me take the time to set this difficult shot, using flashlights placed in the shot to compose and focus [Feel free to email me about this technique, if you are interested.]  It was quite dark and we had to use flashlights just to walk around.

We only had to do a little burning (darkening) of the tower itself in this image.  There is so much detail in this image that you can see loose nails on the plywood “ground” in the foreground.

.

We did something I seldom do for these next three shots, which is after shooting until around 930 pm, Bart and I decided to get up and meet at the Island at 500 am to get access to the tower section before most of the workers arrive.  Once they start working, there is so much commotion and vibration that it is impossible to do very long exposures.

I did this 15 minute shot at around 500 am before first light.

People who know me, know that I am not a morning person!  Bart arrived during this exposure and we got the elevator operator to get us up to the tower area roadbed (seen on the left).

Here is a 3 minute exposure made pre-dawn a few minutes after first light.  It is shot from a catwalk of the new bridge and shows both it and the existing one.  I did three exposures this time of day, but had movement in the other two (probably from the elevator bringing workers up, shaking the steel catwalk structure).  The earlier shot was the best mixture of ambient and artificial light, but those are the foibles of shooting large format at night–especially in a construction site!  The “spikes” are the supports for the pedestrian/bike lane that will connect the East Bay and YBI/Treasure Island.

.

Ambling around on the catwalks is a slow process for safety’s sake (and a bit scary if you look down through the catwalk grating), so I only did four views before the sun rose.  This is the last one and I chose it for its graphic feel of shapes.  There is a bit of blue in the pre-dawn sky and it is still a one minute exposure.  You can see the catwalk lights are still on.  A few minutes later, they went off automatically.

Many ask why I don’t shoot in the early morning hours also, especially in an exotic location.  Actually, I have done it many times on commercial shoots where I have to jet somewhere get a twilight shots of a plant or factory and you only have 1-2 days.  To get several angles, I shoot at both sunrise and sunset.

One of the reasons I don’t prefer to shoot in the early morning is that you have to be in the right place for first light, and you don’t really know where that is, unless you have been there before at dawn.  Also, there is usually less haze in the morning and that light comes up very quickly, limiting your twilight time.  The wind is usually calmer in the morning, which is helpful.

Personally, after the first couple of shots, I begin to get going and my night vision kicks in.  At dawn, once the sun has come up, you are done–there is really not much more to shoot.  For me, the juices are flowing and it’s a let down.  This particular morning I was going to get the first rays of the sun on the tower, and we were all set up to shoot it from the roadbed, but it turned out to be a hazy morning, and looked boring.  I never made the shot.  By 730 am, we were through.

For fun, here is a point-and-shoot image of me working, taken by Bart, up on the roadway around twilight.  That XXL Caltrans raincoat sure isn’t flattering!

.

I have made hundreds of 4×5 views of this project and there will be more before it’s done in 2013.  To me, this project has unlimited possibilities.

.

One last comment:  On August 26-28th, I will be leading a “Urban Night Photography” workshop with Andy Frazer in Los Angeles.  Included are some helpful hands-on, how-to tips in a classroom situation as well as shooting at three different locations.  One night will be at a normally off-limits industrial location.