Industry on Osaka Bay
Last week I visited an industrial centre in Osaka. On a man-made island, there is a concentration of refineries, chemical and power plants. I took the opportunity of having the car and no plans to go explore this area and take some photographs! It was great taking pictures of the stunningly Sci-fi like refinery and chemical plants at night. I'll definitely be back!
This is the Osaka International Oil Refinery. The picture above shows a wide angle shot of about 1/3 of the facillity.
A closer shot showing the pipes and walkways.
Cooling towers and more, many more pipes.
An even larger stack.
A newer or newly retrofitted part of the refinery. The reinforcing steel scaffolding the yellow high visiability paint still bright:
It may seem excessive but Japan is an earthquake prone country sitting atop the junction of 3 major tectonic plates.
Flames!
Across the canal, from a different vantage point; the Mitsui Chemical Plant:
Steam from some process rises into the sky:
Refineries and chemical plants bring up some mixed emotions, hauntingly beautiful with their flood lights, complex steel pipes, rust and safety paint; they produce most of the chemicals and plastics that we use everywhere in our daily lives. These same chemicals and their use does harm to our planet, yet without them we would not be able to realize more environmentally friendly ways of producing the technology and devices that we depend on. We must do our best to design these plants to do as little harm to the environment as possible. Part of that process adds to the complexity you can see in these pictures, cooling and filtering towers to mitigate the substances that are released into the environment. Pipes, and vats to run chemical reactions to render the toxins inert and to recycle them to be used again. Interestingly there were several people taking advantage of the island being build in deep water to fish in this very bay from the shore.
Much of my photography involves subjects a great deal smaller than a factory:
Butterflies <-- is a link to the most recent addition to my series "Little Monsters".
Comments and Discussion are always welcome!
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haha, what a contrast in your photos (in more than one way). I'm not one to go seeking industrial photos, but these do look good with all the light. And nice butterfly. haha
Thank you very much! I like things that look interesting and there are so very many of those, insects, industry, food, people, just about anything really!
I love your photos. They look really amazing.
Thank you @rishi556, I'm glad you enjoyed them!
We have an island like that in Singapore. I remember they said it's 7 island merged into one. Have seen these kind of things mostly in the day when I was working in Jurong Island.
Just looked at Jurong Island on google maps. It looks like the same basic kind of manufactured land. Bringing 7 different islands together would have made things a bit easier I think.
Years ago before I was there, people had to take a ferry to work.
I think the bridge was built when the reclaimed land and merge into one.
If you go earth view on them map, you can see the various tanks of different sizes built on the island.
Yes, quite a few in fact!
The shipping container area looks interesting too.
we have a busy port in Singapore. The biggest being the south is slated to move to the south west. :-)
That sunburst effect on the lamp post in the first photo, can't stop admiring its beauty! Awesome!
Thanks, you can get that effect by using a small aperture on a long exposure shot, light sources that aren't moving will get rays like that from the spaces between the aperture blades.
Wow! Excellent shots @mweich! I like these steam flows from chemical plant.
Thanks! Your oil field post inspired me to finally go out and get these shots, so, thank you! :)
Once I made a post, similar to yours. I have a good location for industrial shooting. But I don't want to have a problems with security. In the present situation relating to terrorism, the man with a camera near the plant raises suspicions. 8))
I just rechecked your industrial pics, very nice! Can't believe I missed a few posts.
Yeah, that thought did cross my mind while I was taking the pictures. Japan isn't quite as paranoid as some other places but I figure as long as you are in public areas and honest about what you are doing you shouldn't have any problems. Of course, "shouldn't" and "won't" are two different things.
The area I was photographing in actually has tours (during the daytime) and is even a somewhat popular destination for industrial photography; I saw two other people taking pictures that night.
@mweich I enjoyed the nighttime refinery photos. Something about the way you captured the light reflecting off the metal is very cool.
Thank you very much! Using a longer exposure time allowed more of the coloured light reflecting off those surfaces to reach the camera. :)
I really like the clarity of the second-to-last photo! What a view!
Thank you, conditions were just right for shooting across the canal. I think the wind blowing to the left of the picture helped, had it been towards the camera it would have looked like fog.
It turned out great. Thanks for sharing!