Thematic Photographic 29 - "Quiet" v.1.0: "Yates Mill by Night"

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"Yates Mill"
Raleigh, NC - December 2008 (Click to embiggen)

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Yates Mill is one of those places on the outskirts of town that I've known was there for years, but had never gotten around to photographing it. It's not that it's all that out of the way, it's just not normally on my radar. that changed a couple of weeks ago when I saw some work that Lee at Tarheel Ramblings had shot at the mill. (You should really check it out, it's awesome!) But as usual I had a spin I wanted to put on the essay. I wanted to shoot it at night.

I had it all figured out. Wait for a full moon on a clear night and there should be just enough light to get a long-exposure shot that would still show plenty of detail. I'd figured out a baseline exposure, white balance setting, all the usual stuff for what I was sure would be a challenging -- but spectacular -- shot.

And last Friday night everything fell into place. The moon was full and bright, the sky was cloudless and the mill was waiting. so I loaded up the camera, tripod and Tonka in the pickup and set sail.

What I didn't count on was that despite having a full moon that was bright enough to read by, there wasn't enough light to focus. My ten-zillion candlepower moon was apparently not yet high enough to give me the lighting I wanted. I couldn't even see through the lens -- at least not anything more than a vague shadow that I assumed to be the mill house. I tried using my trusty 4-cell MagLite to give me something to work with, but I was too far away for it to do the job. The headlights of the truck didn't hit high enough to be of any help either. And the ones from the passing cars were too transient for me to be able to focus.

But I managed to get this one with a little dumb luck (what else can you call it when you focus blind?) and a 30-second exposure. Between the long exposure and the on-again, off-again headlight incursions, my contrast pretty much turned to mud. But the effect was interesting... if not especially aesthetically appealing.

I returned during daylight hours a couple of days later and got some more "conventional" shots that suit the mood of the "Quiet" theme. (Even though a millrace isn't exactly "quiet" in a literal sense, the setting certainly is.) And yes, there will be some of those on display in these pages in the coming days. After all, I didn't shoot all this to keep it to myself.

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