In July I was able to get night access to Alcatraz with a group of night photographers. (Get on Tim’s mailing list, they may decide to do another night tour sometime soon . . .) Part of the tour involved some time inside the medical building. I was lucky the light switch worked inside the exam room, so I was able to make it nice and dark in there. I closed the door so I’d have some time to myself in there. It was about 7 minutes before another photographer wandered in, so I had to work pretty fast to get these.
Operation!
The shadow of the light fixture on the wall above the cabinets is from a light in the hallway shining through the open transom window above the door. The shadows on the right wall are from my LED flashlight. The table was lit from a low angle and the light fixture, from a high angle. Note their shadows are closer together than the actual objects are. The table was also lit from camera right. The stainless steel cabinets were difficult to deal with. Extremely reflective, I made sure to get as little light on them as possible so they would recede into the composition. It’s a composite of 2 exposures (the cabinets, table and floor from one, the rest from the other.)
Vivisectionist
The camera was set up in front of the cabinets here. I used red LED flashlight from a high angle, pointed back towards the camera, down onto the table, careful to give the table leg shadows that splayed effect. I also used a little AA Maglite on the facing side to pull out the white table and subtly fill the shadow cast by the red light.
3 Responses to “Alcatraz Hospital”