Last month, I got access to a fuel dock for a major oil company, where ships offload into storage tanks (tank farm) here in the LA area.  I’ve wanted to shoot here for a couple of years, and finally got in.  I only had about an hour, but I shot as quickly as I could with my 4×5 view camera.  I did seven views that evening, and here are five of them.

These images are in sequence of how I shot them.  Notice how the light changes.  It was unseasonably warm that day with clear skies.

I used select focus on the white freshly painted foreground valves.  It might not be as noticeable on a monitor.  I shot this because I liked the diagonal lines and the interesting mix of colors of the twilight sky and the green structure and the warm tones of the sky and the cool blue/white of the pipes and valves.  The red really popped, as well.  At this time of day, the colors are very saturated.

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The lights are beginning to come on in this view of the chicksans (the articulating “hoses” that hook the ship to shore).  I liked the magenta/blue gradation in the twilight sky.  That is a hawk perched on the lit light fixture, left of center.  In these two shots, above, the sunset was behind me (looking east).

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I’ve turned the camera towards the north-west for this shot of the tanks.  The camera is positioned to block out the bright lamps and is only 2 foot off the dock.  I shot this because of the mix of colored lighting.  Considering these pipelines move oil and gasoline, they are remarkably clean, as was the whole facility.

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I am now looking west, looking into the twilight sky.  The curved bulkheads in the water reflect in the still waters.  They mimic the huge round tanks.  This is shot on negative film and has a very different feel than the image above, on transparency film.

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It is now completely dark.  This is shot with a longer lens across the slough at a different tank farm.  The water was very still and I shot this because of the two barges names are ‘Big Boy’ and ‘Bad Boy’, which made me chuckle.  There was more movement in the water than I expected (possibly from the current?) in this 6 minute exposure, as the names are unreadable.  The motion of the barges gives a softness to the image, sort of like the roundness of the tanks.  The reflections from the white tanks in the water make the shot.

I had never been to this facility, so I had to spend about 20 minutes scouting where to shoot.  Also, I could not bring my car in, so had to carefully pack what I thought I would need and carry it the quarter mile to this location.  Because of my limited time, I shot all these views within 50 feet of each other.  I had an escort and was prohibited to use an electronic camera.  Frequently, I take a few snaps with my point-and-shoot during the exposures–but not this time.  Hopefully, I will be able to come back to this multi-acre location, as this is just a small portion of what is there.