Ship Yard Structure, Night

Posted on 24 September 2009

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

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

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

This photograph is not in the public domain. It may not be used on websites, blogs, or in any other media without explicit advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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