I recently spent part of a day shooting the operations of the Port of Long Beach, something I have long wanted to do. For security and safety reasons, the logistics of photographing a busy port can be complicated. I have driven around both the Port of Long Beach and the neighboring Port of Los Angeles a couple of times to try to figure out vantage points from which I could shoot without either being arrested or hit by a truck.
That problem was solved recently when I discovered that the Port of Long Beach offers weekly boat tours. Instead of shooting from land, I was able to capture my images from the water, out of range of the trucks and with the blessing of law enforcement.
I love shooting big industrial landscapes. What they lack in conventional beauty, they often make up for in aesthetically pleasing geometry and symmetry. I also like being witness to the innovative ways we solve big problems. How do we efficiently transport as many cars as we can from one continent to another? How do we reduce the cost of launching a rocket into space? How do we efficiently load and unload a ship the size of four football fields?
Here, for example, is a group of gantry cranes used to load and unload container ships:
Gantry Cranes – Port of Long Beach, California
Because the Earth is nearest to space at the middle of the planet, rockets are occasionally launched from floating platforms at the equator in order to reduce costs. Long Beach is home to one such platform, called the Sea Launch, which is towed by a ship called the Sea Launch Commander. Here they are:
The Sea Launch and Sea Launch Commander – Port of Long Beach, California
Electricity is produced at the port by the Harbor Cogeneration Facility, which is a 100 megawatt natural gas-fired electrical generation plant.
Harbor Cogeneration Facility – Port of Long Beach, California
In addition to all of this 21st century technology, the Port also has some throwbacks to the past, including the Queen Mary…
Queen Mary – Long Beach, California
…and some Art Deco warehouse facilities, dating from the mid 1950s:
Pier D – Port of Long Beach
