The kitchen at Alcatraz

After the relaxation of a week in the sun in Maui what better way to continue a honeymoon than with a few days in San Francisco.  That’s exactly what we did, and as the song says “if you’re going to San Francisco, be sure to…” visit Alcatraz (you can wear a flower in your hair if you wish), and if possible book yourself onto the last evening tour.  We visited in the evening and it definitely added an extra sense of eerieness to the place.  For example, though I can’t remember exactly how much natural light could find its way into the kitchen which I photographed above, I’m pretty sure if this was taken in the middle of the day the photograph wouldn’t be as atmospheric as I like to think it is.

For one thing the two ceiling lights that are switched on, and the four that are switched off, to my mind suggests a place where only the bare essentials are a way of life.  Two lights give enough illumination to the room, why turn on the other four?  Alcatraz felt like a place where the word luxury was never spoken, though probably often longed for, and the barren feel to this image kind of speaks of that.

The composition of this shot was somewhat forced on me as this particular kitchen is behind a barrier – it may be behind glass in fact, I can’t recall, but it wasn’t possible to enter it.  I chose a wide angle to show as much of the space, and the sense of emptiness, as possible.  It was important to get the exposure to reflect the scene as it looked to my eye and I recall spot metering for the bright spot on the wall just under the illuminated lights, and using that to set the exposure so that there was still some detail in the shadows, but not too much.

At the time I was shooting with a D50 in JPEG format, but I was still able to neutralize the colours somewhat in Aperture to overcome the fact that the shot is tungsten lit, but was shot in daylight white balance.

You’d hardly even know it is a kitchen from the image – there are only a few hints of it at the bottom left, and it’s not clear what that construction in the middle of the frame is, though I suspect it was some sort of hut for a prison guard perhaps?  There’s still something about this image that caught my eye when I first when to take it, and continues to do so now over two years later when I look at it again.