Recently I was hired to shoot a couple things that were simply different than the usual things I’m hired to shoot. This is the oil refinery in Carson, CA. This is probably one of the most exciting unusual jobs I’ve ever had. The client Tesoro gave me a general idea as to what they were looking for as far as photographs and then gave me the freedom to shoot the refinery, however, I thought it should be done. So I met with a couple people from Tesoro and went on a tour and we came up with a plan, set a day and captured some photos that impress even me.
On the tour, I found out that oil refineries really aren’t so bad. The stuff that looks like smoke coming out of the cooling towers is simply steam. The oil refinery uses recycled water for their cooling process. There are highly efficient finding uses for even the by-product of the process and they generate their own energy, they sell their energy back to Edison. I think oil refineries are fairly misunderstood and are necessary in the modern world.
Tesoro also had me photographing some of their gas station which I will be sharing shortly.
