This is the award winning AES Alamitos Battery Energy Storage System facility. The energy is stored in large battery banks inside and the cases surrounding the building house the inverters. It is able to provide power at peak demand times on a par with natural gas systems.
Upon scouting the facility I knew the hero shot was going to be a dusk exterior however that was easier said than done. This building was devoid of any kind of architectural lighting and worse, there were l.e.d. safety floodlights installed near our camera position that were going to spray everywhere contaminating the scene and possibly flaring the lens. Also of concern were the array of downlights attached to the building about halfway up. Fine for everyday walking around at night but in camera they made ugly blown out highlights all over the shiny corrugated metal side. Blown highlights are a pet peeve of mine and I work very hard to eliminate it or control it whenever possible. Sometimes it’s the lights you turn off that matters most, and fortunately our request to have control over these fixtures was heard and acted on. Also fortunate for us was room in the budget to have a boom lift on site enabling us to light paint the building from any desired angle.
Exterior at Dusk | Click photo to view larger
The working psd file ended up quite large as dozens of lighting layers were composited together. Final touches included replacement of the foreground asphalt on the right side of the frame and removal of the traffic gate.
BTS | Light painting from the Genie Lift. Even with us shutting off the on site flood lights, there is still contamination from lights in neighboring buildings and parking lot lights. You can’t control everything, much as I would like to and just have to deal with it the best you can.
Several views of the interior were requested. This building is over 40.000 sq. ft with some views encompassing the entire length of the building. Existing overhead light fixtures provided general illumination but to pull detail out of the deep black cabinets we pumped strobe lighting into the scenes- virtually relighting the set and then carefully composited select captures into the final images in post. How this is carried out has a profound impact on the end result, and in one particular case I provided 2 different variations of a favorite shot to the client. Sometimes you get inspired to try new approaches and come up with something different.
Axial view with a large depth of field
BTS | Full PPE required on this job before we were allowed on site. Here we are pumping 1000 watt/seconds through a single head to get the f stop I wanted. Enough captures like this one, and we have plenty of options available to us in post.
Raked lighting brings out the textures and heightens the drama.
Battery banks with person to show scale.