From Daylight to Neon: A Day at Niles Flying A and the Niles Depot, Fremont
There's a gas station in Niles, Fremont, that hasn't sold gas in seventy years.
The pumps still work — at least, the dials still turn — and they're showing 1958 prices: twenty-seven and a half cents a gallon. The Flying A signage above the canopy is painted in the original Tidewater Associated green and red. A 1959 Dodge Custom Royal sits in the forecourt with its original California plates, chrome that mirrors the cobblestones, tail fins so tall they catch the light from across the street. A Coca-Cola sign on the wall behind the building is big enough to fill a frame from twenty feet away.
The forecourt at Niles Flying A — pumps, cobblestones, and a 1959 Dodge that hasn't moved in a long time.
This is the Niles Flying A — originally the Solon Brothers gas station and diner, purchased from the railroad in 1938, now restored as a working museum dedicated to the car culture and history of Niles. Niles is a small neighborhood in Fremont that used to be its own town until annexation in 1956, and parts of it still act like one. The Flying A sits at the eastern edge of the boulevard. The Niles Canyon Railway depot is a five-minute walk west. Both are operating preserved historic sites, both sit on the same square mile, and on a Saturday in late spring you can shoot at one in the early afternoon, change wardrobe, walk to the other for golden hour, and come back to the first when the neon switches on.
That's the day this post is about.
The session was an editorial collaboration with a client who wanted a Western theme — white Western styling for the gas station, black off-shoulder dress for the railway depot. We had eight hours, two looks, and one location that turned out to have three completely different visual registers depending on what time we showed up.
The Flying A team have been generous hosts to photographers and film crews since they began the restoration. They gave us the run of the forecourt and the storefront. If you're considering Niles as a Bay Area location for editorial or lifestyle work, their website is the right starting point — they're approachable, the property is one of the most photogenic preserved sites in the East Bay, and they actively welcome collaborations.
Mid-afternoon at the Flying A — directional canopy light and a backdrop that does half the work.
The white-outfit chapter came first because the early afternoon light at the Flying A is directional and warm — the canopy throws shadows across the forecourt at exactly the angle you want, the cobblestones reflect the light back up under the chin, and the Dodge's pale blue paint sits in the same color family as the green pumps without competing. The styling worked because the location had already done half the work. White corset top, white jeans, brown belt with a concho buckle, brown cowboy boots with turquoise inlay, a kimono cardigan, a white fedora. The era the outfit is referencing is roughly the same era the pumps are from. The frame composes itself.
The B&W conversions belong to a different register than the color frames — and the styling pulls in that direction.
I converted several of the gas station frames to black and white in editing. The colour frames are accurate to what was there — the green pumps, the blue car, the red Coca-Cola sign. But the styling itself wants black and white. There's a register of mid-century American photography that the colour version of these frames quotes and the black and white version belongs to. It's the same difference as a film still versus a publicity photograph. The session was always going to lean into the editorial register, and the B&W conversions are part of that decision.
The kind of frame that needs no instruction — just the prop and a moment.
The Flying A property has more in it than the forecourt. There's a Model T era pickup parked under the "WELCOME / FRIENDLY / FULL SERVE" signage on the south side of the building. A weathered older sedan in the field at the back, paint oxidised to a rust-pink patina. An orange Chevrolet 3600 truck behind the perimeter fence with the original tailgate still hanging on. A couple of the cars are runners — the rest are part of the museum's restoration pipeline, in various states of preservation. None of it is staged for photography, but all of it photographs.
Resting on the truck between takes.
The truck was the strongest of the side-vehicle chapters. The paint has the kind of patina that takes fifty years of sun to develop and is essentially impossible to fake — actual rust under actual paint, faded to the point where the truck reads as warm rather than damaged. Backlit through the cab window, the light wrapping the model's hair, the white outfit picking up the orange of the paint as a reflected fill — it's the kind of frame where every variable was already cooperating before I lifted the camera.
The field car at the back of the property.
The Model T hasn't had an engine in decades. The forecourt behind it hasn't changed much either.
By late afternoon we'd worked through the white-outfit chapter and the model wanted a change. The black off-shoulder dress with combat boots and red lip wasn't planned as a tonal shift — it was wanted for variety — but it landed as one. The afternoon light was getting longer and warmer. The Niles Canyon Railway depot was a short walk away. We changed and headed over.
The Niles Depot is the other half of why Niles works as a location. Preserved railway depot, working historic line, restored carriages and freight cars on display. The diamond-lattice gate of one of the railcar doorways became the entry frame for the second chapter — green and white painted iron, peeling paint, the carriage number 37682 stencilled on a black plaque, rusted steel interior. She leaned out of the doorway with the railcar number visible behind her shoulder, red lip, hoop earrings, and the entire visual register of the day flipped from pin-up Americana to editorial cinema.
The wardrobe changed. The register followed it — pin-up to editorial cinema in one outfit.
The wardrobe changed. The register followed it — pin-up to editorial cinema in one outfit.
Further down the depot, a preserved caboose with its red brake wheel and chained gate gave a third backdrop. A wagon with TNT barrels and milk cans, leftover staging from a depot exhibit, became a fourth. The black dress works at every one of these because the dress doesn't compete with the iron — it lets the rust and the paint and the depot fixtures do the color work.
The caboose at the depot — red brake wheel, chained gate, and a dress that doesn't compete.
By the time we left the depot the sun was dropping toward the western ridge of the canyon. There's a wildflower field on the walk back to the Flying A — purple lupine, yellow mustard, dry oat grass tall enough to hide a knee. The wildflower frames were the quietest part of the day. After the high-key Western styling at the gas station and the editorial-cinema register at the depot, the field gave us a chance to slow down. Twenty minutes of sit-in-the-grass, look-up-at-the-light, hand-to-the-jaw frames. Less of a constructed register and more of a lived one. The black dress against dry oat grass and lavender wildflowers in raking sunset light is one of those combinations where the only correct response is to expose for the highlights and let everything else fall into place.
Grass, sunset, an editorial pose — exposure for the highlights and let everything else fall in.
We walked back to the Flying A after the sun went down.
This is the part of the day I hadn't planned for. The Flying A's neon comes on at dusk, and "FLYING A SERVICE" in green and red painted glass is one of the strongest single fixtures of the property. I've shot the forecourt in afternoon light and I've shot the pumps in the dim before-dark — but I'd never seen what the building does at full neon. The answer is that it transforms. The same gas station that read as warm Americana at three in the afternoon read as cinematic noir at eight thirty.
The closing frame of the day — six hours after the first, same building, completely different photograph.
What surprised me about the session, looking back at the edit, is how much the location did. The wardrobe change supported the day, but the day's structure came from the building. Niles Flying A in afternoon sun, Niles Flying A in neon. The depot in between. The wildflower field as the connective tissue. One square mile of Fremont, one model, two looks, one full visual range.
If you're considering Niles as a location for an editorial or lifestyle session, the short version is: it works. The Flying A team are responsive and welcoming. The depot is a separate site with its own access logistics — worth checking the Niles Canyon Railway schedule before planning a shoot, since the railcars are on a working historic line. The wildflower field is public. Parking is along Niles Boulevard. Plan for sundown.
For more of my favourite Bay Area editorial locations, the Best Bay Area Outdoor Photography Locations guide covers the locations I rotate through most — Dumbarton Bridge Shoreline Trail, Gamble Garden in Palo Alto, Villa Montalvo in Saratoga, and others.
If you're interested in a session of your own — editorial, personal lifestyle, or otherwise — the contact page is the right starting point.
*** Model: Alina Obukhova @alinob.art and alinobart.com ***