Spring Training detour - The Salton Sea (part 2)

Now with the successful sunset shoot at Bombay beach in the can, and the blurred memories of a long day of driving, it was time for a dinner and a place to crash. Finding the most convenient roadside hotel was high on the agenda as I was running on fumes. Unfortunately, under those conditions, my decision-making abilities were not at it's best! The only rooms available at this roadside hotel were smoking rooms. Well, it's been a while since I stayed in one, how bad could it be? After only 4 hours of sleep, I awoke with a massive headache and a sore throat. I knew instantly it was time to leave.

Back in the car again, I decided to just head back to the Salton Sea at 3:30 am to look for a place to shoot the sunrise. Before I knew it, I was on that earlier apocalyptic landscape of Bombay Beach. It was a known location in an unfamiliar area, where I knew there would be something to shoot at sunrise. Now with some two and half hours to kill, I took the opportunity to shoot some long exposure night scenes.

Fortunately, I was blessed with some high clouds and a near full moon. With the smell of dead fish and eerie sounds of birds in the distance as I trudged through the soggy salt, it was a perfect place for my imagination to take over. So armed with a flashlight to navigate and focus, and a tripod, it was time to make some images. This first image with lit by just direct moonlight, that set the scene but was not too dramatic.

After an hour shooting around the beach, I gravitated back to that earlier trailer structure, seeing it in a completely different way. With the high clouds and the moon shining bright, back lighting it, I found a familiar scenario where I would use an artificial light source to make the image pop. Wanting to see the details in the trailer while maintaining the dramatic skies, I light painted the trailer with the flashlight. Bouncing the cool LED light off my hand to warm up the look, I danced around the trailer during the 30-second exposures filling in the shadows. 

After making dozens of exposures and getting the light painting choreography down. This was my favorite image from that half hour of choreographed dance.

As the morning progressed, I waited for that magic stream of light.  It popped in and out, as the sun broke thought the clouds for about 45 minutes while I chased it around the beach. 

The following images were made during that short period.

 

With the sun, high enough in the sky to have lost it's golden glow, I wandered the shoreline again looking at the dead fish in the morning light. I was surprised how colorless the images were compared to the previous ones I had shot just and hour before. As the light was getting higher, I pulled out a color inferred converted camera and shot just a few scenes again before ending my glorious 12 hours adventure to the Salton Sea at 8 am. 

The last image is a monochrome converted color inferred image.

Spring Training detour - The Salton Sea (part 1)

It’s been over ten years since I have had an assignment during the MLB Cactus League Spring training in Arizona. This year I was fortunate to secure two separate assignments, one with the Oakland Athletics team photographer, Michael Zagaris, as his lighting collaborator and three days shooting for the European Photo Agency, covering the Oakland Athletics newest acquisition, designated hitter Hideki Matsui from Japan.

In the passed when I've worked for Jiji Press, a Japanese wire service and the San Francisco Giants, it was a fly in and out trip from Oakland to Phoenix. Now with all the airline carry on restrictions, added baggage charges, security hassles and lack of security for equipment. An 11 hour drive from northern California seems to be a less stressful way to travel. And for this trip, if I had to ship all the lighting gear, it would amount to a small fortune. 

 

Now with the stage set to hit the road, I have actually done this trip many times to visit friends in Phoenix. And every time it's been just motoring on through so I don't get in at an ungodly hour. This time I made plans to detour to the Salton Sea, a place I've heard about for many years. A location where many photo shoots have taken advantage of it's unique landscape. Just south of the Indio and the Palm Springs area, the Salton Sea developed into a tourist attraction in the 1920's, because of its water recreation, and waterfowl attraction to the area. However, in the 50's and 60's, environmental issues changed the seas salinity creating large fish die offs and the decline of tourism. Leaving nature to reclaim its rights to surrounding areas in a cruel and brutal fashion.

I had planned to arrive for a sunset shoot along the Salton Sea. But, since I had never been there before, a bit of research turned up a location on the eastern coast of the lake. Bombay Beach, built in the 50's, it has been a favorite destination for photographers for decades due to the wild and incredible decaying scenes of abandoned salt encrusted structures. Even with the best-laid plans, checking sun set times, TRAFFIC and the Highway Patrol will make a mess of anything. No, I did not get a ticket, but boy can they slow things up. I arrived at Bombay Beach with about 15 minutes of sun still visible, even though sunset was about 30 minutes away. After eight straight hours in the car, I quickly took advantage of the few golden minutes before the sun disappeared behind a local mountain range. As I worked the abandoned salt encrusted structures, which were barely recognizable, compared to images I found on the web, I felt a bit cheated. The structures were so decayed; it was hard to even recognize what they were. 

 

As the sunset, I found myself in a post apocalyptic scene. With the crunching of salt under my feet and the smell of decay, I wandered of to the shoreline, with a string of amateur photographers with tripods shooting the sunset.  Stepping over salted preserved fish along the sandy beach, I came to realize it was not sand, but the broken and crushed scales and bones of thousands of passed fish die offs, along with whole fish laying everywhere. 

As I watched the sky darken and the other photographers shooting the glowing skies, I walked along the shoreline hovering low with my camera trying to capture the true essence of the Salton Sea. Fortunately, the Internet has not reach the ability to offer a sense-o-rama feature. The smell was quite over whelming once you got down on your knees. Even after the sun set, the beach yielded an incredible over whelming sense of death that stared back at you through the pitch black eye holes of the dried salted fish.

Now only having about 30 minutes of shooting in, I knew I had to return.