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.
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.
