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Short day trip to Alameda Naval Station environs with April and Rayna
April (aktse) and I are both on twitter. She emailed me asking if I'd like to go shooting with her, so I said sure! Turned out Rayna was free so she joined us.
We were on our way to Treasure Island to shoot some neat old buildings, peeling paint textures, etc., before they are torn down. Unfortunately we were bike raced out! Barriers every where... so on to plan b, which I didn't know we had, LOL.
April wanted to scout out Alameda for part of the pre Smugmug birthday party shoot. By this time it was raining, but off we went. Managed to survive traffic and actually found the old naval station without a map.
Rayna pulled over so we could get a wide area shot of the ships. I spotted this old encrusted wooden piling structure, and decided to make it part of the image. It was drizzling at this point, and I had to wipe my lens off after every shot.
While I have greatly enhanced these photos with the magic of photoshop, I haven't been especially careful with every detail, haven't burned in the top of the photos with clouds or double checked the bottoms for stray bits of this and that to clone out, and decided to leave power lines in for the moment.
We then drove up to the parking area for the USS Hornet, et al. Here is a photo of April next to a really big ship!
The lighting was definitely challenging. So I decided that when it's drizzling and the light is so flat, search out for textures and things to zoom in on.
This was a short receptacle for trash, probably no more than 18 inches high. This is the outside. They used "line" for the handles. (Real sailors don't call it rope!)
And here are the knots on the inside of the receptacle.
Look at that glorious texture. You wouldn't see that or be able to photograph it in bright sunlight!
This line was so thick! It's difficult to convey the size of it in this photo. But just think that it's holding that huge ship to the dock and you might have some idea.
Getting back to the big ships, I really liked how the overcast (drizzling) sky made the water look a deep green. I also liked the curve of the floats enclosing the ships.
Back to detail I spotted what appears to be a light. It sure is protected against accidental breakage.
There were a lot of confusing (to me) painted striping, railroad tracks from out of no where, so of course I had to take a photo. Can you tell I also like grunge?
I found a rusty looking manhole cover.
And a painted manhole cover or grate.
It took me forever to spot the airplane on the top of the deck! Here I also got two visitors to the museum next to the plane. The admission is $12 per adult.
Some more mystery "grafitti" painted on the concrete pier.
A not so clear "keep clear." I thought the yellow paint blobs looked like yellow leaves.
A brief porta potty visit, and I knew someone reading this paper dispenser is going to be disappointed one day!
I was fascinated with these two hooks? loops? and played with some selective focus.
By this time I needed to rest my back in the car, but the raindrops on the windshield fascinated me. I actually had to use manual focus to get the effect I wanted.
And a view of the USS Hornet.
Thinking that we had battled with the light and drizzle long enough we decided to drive around to see what else was in the neighborhood that might make for some interesting shooting.
In this one area we found this really neat building, but it turned out to be a Boys and Girls Club, apparently in use? I don't have a good photo of it. Just beyond was wine tasting. Wine tasting???? Sure enough it was real. Here's one photo of the load of wine barrels they had outside.
"All Gone" just a wine stain to show some residue of the contents.
We found a skate park, but I didn't feel like getting hassled for photographing children, so I shot this deserted looking building instead.
And looking east I got some photos of the container ship loading cranes. Notice the two smaller boats approaching the cargo ship?
April showed me her metallic prints, and I just know this shot would really pop out and look very 3D.
We spotted this building and were talking about where Nik would put his models!
Driving around the block, we saw this sign over the door. After all this processing, I feel like I need a transistion assistance myself.
That's it for the photos. We found a marina, a long beach, and McDonalds, and managed to find our way off the island and back home.
Thank you for reading!
We were on our way to Treasure Island to shoot some neat old buildings, peeling paint textures, etc., before they are torn down. Unfortunately we were bike raced out! Barriers every where... so on to plan b, which I didn't know we had, LOL.
April wanted to scout out Alameda for part of the pre Smugmug birthday party shoot. By this time it was raining, but off we went. Managed to survive traffic and actually found the old naval station without a map.
Rayna pulled over so we could get a wide area shot of the ships. I spotted this old encrusted wooden piling structure, and decided to make it part of the image. It was drizzling at this point, and I had to wipe my lens off after every shot.
While I have greatly enhanced these photos with the magic of photoshop, I haven't been especially careful with every detail, haven't burned in the top of the photos with clouds or double checked the bottoms for stray bits of this and that to clone out, and decided to leave power lines in for the moment.
We then drove up to the parking area for the USS Hornet, et al. Here is a photo of April next to a really big ship!
The lighting was definitely challenging. So I decided that when it's drizzling and the light is so flat, search out for textures and things to zoom in on.
This was a short receptacle for trash, probably no more than 18 inches high. This is the outside. They used "line" for the handles. (Real sailors don't call it rope!)
And here are the knots on the inside of the receptacle.
Look at that glorious texture. You wouldn't see that or be able to photograph it in bright sunlight!
This line was so thick! It's difficult to convey the size of it in this photo. But just think that it's holding that huge ship to the dock and you might have some idea.
Getting back to the big ships, I really liked how the overcast (drizzling) sky made the water look a deep green. I also liked the curve of the floats enclosing the ships.
Back to detail I spotted what appears to be a light. It sure is protected against accidental breakage.
There were a lot of confusing (to me) painted striping, railroad tracks from out of no where, so of course I had to take a photo. Can you tell I also like grunge?
I found a rusty looking manhole cover.
And a painted manhole cover or grate.
It took me forever to spot the airplane on the top of the deck! Here I also got two visitors to the museum next to the plane. The admission is $12 per adult.
Some more mystery "grafitti" painted on the concrete pier.
A not so clear "keep clear." I thought the yellow paint blobs looked like yellow leaves.
A brief porta potty visit, and I knew someone reading this paper dispenser is going to be disappointed one day!
I was fascinated with these two hooks? loops? and played with some selective focus.
By this time I needed to rest my back in the car, but the raindrops on the windshield fascinated me. I actually had to use manual focus to get the effect I wanted.
And a view of the USS Hornet.
Thinking that we had battled with the light and drizzle long enough we decided to drive around to see what else was in the neighborhood that might make for some interesting shooting.
In this one area we found this really neat building, but it turned out to be a Boys and Girls Club, apparently in use? I don't have a good photo of it. Just beyond was wine tasting. Wine tasting???? Sure enough it was real. Here's one photo of the load of wine barrels they had outside.
"All Gone" just a wine stain to show some residue of the contents.
We found a skate park, but I didn't feel like getting hassled for photographing children, so I shot this deserted looking building instead.
And looking east I got some photos of the container ship loading cranes. Notice the two smaller boats approaching the cargo ship?
April showed me her metallic prints, and I just know this shot would really pop out and look very 3D.
We spotted this building and were talking about where Nik would put his models!
Driving around the block, we saw this sign over the door. After all this processing, I feel like I need a transistion assistance myself.
That's it for the photos. We found a marina, a long beach, and McDonalds, and managed to find our way off the island and back home.
Thank you for reading!
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I am joining Nik in December for his 'model shoot' so I am quite intrigued by your shots! Thanks for enduring the rain, and sharing these.
ann
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Looks like you had quite a trip, even though the original destination didn't work out as planned.
Overcast doesn't usually help for interesting shots, but the close-ups worked out well.
The shot of the Hapag-Lloyd ship is my favorite
www.ivarborst.nl & smugmug
Plan B (which I made up): There has been some talk about a dgrin party pre-shoot and I figured this was as good as a time as any for a scouting trip to Alameda since we were near by. This city is basically an island on the east side of the CA bay area near Oakland which contains a mixture --- well, a mixture of things. And it’s interesting exploring without any maps because we never really knew where we were. Afterwards, I discovered that we mainly shot in this area outlined in Orange. Dee kept remember looking at planes before, but we never found them. I didn't realize there were runways until I got home!
But it started raining the moment we stepped out of the car
1. Haze and Rain (IR)
We found boats out of the water
2. Dry Dock
We found boats in shallow water near a soccer field.
3. Twenty Feet (IR)
And ships waiting proudly.
4. Cape Gibson, tied up.
And discovered a majestic navy ship with a view of the city behind it.
5.Algol
We then decided to search for the decommissioned naval base, but ended finding odd things
5. The Boy and Girls Club (yes, still being used), and next to high end wine cellar. I kept playing around the the horizon line and perspective, and then realized that the building is not level.
I’m using seeing abandons buildings that are really abandoned, but these had life continuing around them – a soccer game, a skate park, a catering company, etc. These buildings weren’t really abandoned, but more like, not used and kept up.
6. Vacant
You drive around a bit, and you find sights like this
7. Bird, Boat + Palm Trees (only in CA).
I think Nikolai + models will have lots of options in this area.
For sunrise – I just haven’t found the perfect spot yet. I think we would be golden location if we could get to this pier since you can see the bay bridge, the view of the city, the ball park, and the navy ships are behind you.
8. SF
But I can’t figure out how to get there.
I'll keep looking...
Much thanks to Dee and Rayna!
I was wondering what you came up with as you were wandering in different directions than I did
It always amazes me how photographers will photograph the same area very differently and I enjoyed seeing your view of the area very much.
I think I figured out that the planes are inside the Oakland Air Museum. I will have to go back and go inside the Air Museum, but being indoors and crowded with planes I'm not sure what kind of photos I would get.
What I remembered seeing were photos from an open cockpit day where the volunteers had the planes outside.
I did come across some great photos taken inside the USS Hornet museum here: http://www.uss-hornet.org/exhibits/photos/
Despite the rain, I had a lot of fun.
http://www.twitter.com/deegolden
Here are four of Rayna's photos (used with permission).
I didn't see this myself, Rayna wandered off to the west.
Looks like a tug? I didn't walk far enough to see this.
Rayna actually got both the helicopter and the airplane showing on the deck of the Hornet.
http://www.twitter.com/deegolden