The Salton Sea is a very interesting location nestled between Los Angeles and San Diego just to the east. It's the largest body of water in California and was once a vacation destination for the well off. Over time the evaporation of the water left the salinity level so high it killed all the fish. Needless to say this scared off all the tourists, and what's left of it is one of the strangest places I've ever visited. The beaches are largely made of crushed fish bones and fish carcases are scattered everywhere. Even after all these years the smell in the area is unbelievably strong, a mix of salt and dead fish. That alone should tell you quite a bit about this place.
Every road trip in Los Angeles starts the same, with traffic on the freeway. Today though, it looks like I got off easy. My route takes me south on the 405 toward Oceanside . From there I head off east, through the mountains to the Salton Sea.
I'm always trying to keep an eye out for good photo opportunities. I saw this graphitti on some concrete dividers and decided that it might make a nice backdrop for a very horizontal photo using my car as the subject. I'm excited to see what the end result of this shot will look like. This is how I like to work in a lot of ways, take a quick snapshot with interesting composition. I consider the initial photograph to be about 25% of the end result, since I do quite a bit of post processing with Photoshop and I can change almost everything but the composition.
My first stop was a town called Truckheaven, I believe. It's a sparsely populated beach community directly on the west coast of the sea. Most of the elderly tenants were living in trailers. About 50 feet behind where I was standing was a man watering his perfectly manicured lawn. I walked over this strange little bridge down to the Salton Sea. After standing on the beach for the first time I had to wonder if the man watering his lawn could ever actually enjoy it. Why? Read on...
The water is surprisingly beautiful because the sea is almost perfectly calm. As I would find out later, in some places it reflects as well as any mirror. At some points there is enough haze in the air to create the look of what would surely be the worlds largest vanishing edge swimming pool. Avian fanatics visit this area for it's plethora of bird life. Specifically Pelicans, seen here gliding just above the surface of the water for dramatic effect.
The beach is pure white, but unfortunately the reason it's white is because it's made up of crushed fish bones. At any given moment, a quick look around will reveal countless dead fish. The sea smells absolutely horrendous, I don't know how people could stay here and live around the stench.
My next stop was the marina and/or yacht club, or what's left of it. You can see the old waterline if you look closely. It looks to be about 4 feet higher than it is at it's current level. You can also see the pillars that once held docks in place. The water in the foreground is in a little man made cove about the size of a baseball infield.
Just to the south of the yacht club is a little playground area where kids would play. It's a truly post-apocalyptic sight to see something like this. If it weren't for the creepy devil drawing on the slide that's half buried in crushed fish bones it might be nice. Like a lot of things I saw around the Salton Sea, I could never really imagine this being a real place where real people once spent time.
To me this image represents everything that is the Salton Sea. The water is pretty to look at, yet so salty that fish are still living/dying in it. Pretty white rocks are made white by pelicans defecating on them over the years. The beaches are beautiful and white from a distance, when focused they reveal a bed of crushed fish bones and carcases. You truly can not judge this book by it's cover. Notice how amazingly still this large body of water is, I've never seen anything like it.
Like any good resort town there needs to be a place for everyone to stay when they come to spend a holiday. Clearly abandoned, seemingly every inch of wall covered in "evil" grafitti. "Satan lived here" "In here lives the BEAST" etc. Some of the boarded up doors had holes kicked in them, with instructions to crawl in the hole. No thank you.
Like every good hotel there is a pool, and apparently this one is where "Hells Cuties "swim. There is random furniture thrown all over the hotel grounds. There were chair frames in the bottom of the pool as well as a burned mattress.
My next stop was Bombay Beach, which I believe is the most populated town on the east coast of the Salton Sea. It's a very strange mix of run down old houses, like the one here, right next to a house that someone currently lives in. The town is very quiet and I have no idea what anyone living here would be doing for a living.
The interiors are no better kept that the outside and of course that's what you'd expect. However I didn't expect to see burned stuffed animals and books. I can't believe that these are left over from the original tenants but I guess you never know. And at any rate, they sure do give off a creepy uncomfortable vibe.
That did it for my first trip out to the Salton Sea. Like I said, I wasn't prepared enough to see some of the other things that I wanted to. But I did manage to get a few photos that I really like, and should be able to do something with. So keep an eye out here, I should have something up in a few days.
Wikipedia entry on the Salton Sea
Official Salton Sea website
Kim Stringfellows great photo essay on the Salton Sea
Like I said in the blog about the location this photo was taken, it just looked slightly interesting compositionally and I needed a break from driving. So lets throw this into Photoshop and see what we can do.
The first thing I always do is adjust my saturation and contrast levels. At this stage I've decided it's about the car, so I adjust to make the car look like I want it to. I'm not concerned with any other elements in the photo, just the car. I've also started painting out my front license plate, hehe.
Next up for me is to add some "depth of field" to the image. I like to use focus to drive the eye and ,in this case, I want to also use focus to draw the eye away from the extremely boring background.
Now I've started to to a bit more work. First I've darkened the corners, I'm not sure what natural effect causes this but I really enjoy the look. To me it places the subject "out there" and sets you back from it, it makes me feel like a voyeur and observer. The second thing I've done is to start desaturating areas, specifically the bright sky and very "rich" background dirt pile. I've also removed visual detail from the foreground, kind of "posterizing" it. At this point it's clear what the focal point is, and you have no choice but to look at it, the annoying background is also becoming slightly less annoying.
The foreground still bothers me, it seemed out of place and washed out. So I darkened it more, realizing at this point I would be cropping the photo to make it very horizontal. I've also added back in some color to the asphalt as it gets closer to the car. Again I did this to drive the eye and to "sew" in the foreground visually as it gets closer to the subject matter.
