HDR Photography
Bombay Beach is awash in two things: (1) crystallized runoff from the Salton Sea and (2) surreal sculptural juxtapositions. Both the rusty pyramid and the sand rail are metal framework structures, but in radically different applications and states of repair.
This school bus, parked at Bombay Beach by the edge of the Salton Sea, seems to be focused on some not-school-appropriate activities.
Before riding off to the environs of Bombay Beach on the shores of the Salton Sea, this fellow prepared his ATV. The upside-down American flag in front of the semi-abandoned landscape make for an appropriate pairing.
Big, dramatic American landscapes, red filters, and square aspect ratios might be a cliché combination, but while Ansel Adams shot with a tiny aperture for deep and pin-sharp focus, I feel like this wide-open approach and its soft bokeh provide a new twist.
Well-maintained but sunbaked picnic tables on the shores of the Salton Sea seem a little bit taunting—asking travelers to stop for a snack in a place not fully safe to live.
A wide-open aperture captures the desert dust storms and provides some soft bokeh to a prickly American landscape. I like the sense of depth and space it creates.
Dream-logic usually stays confined to dreams, but this swing in the Salton Sea appears fully isolated and separated from reality (while still existing within it); I’m reminded of an extremely low-rent version of Itsukushima Shrine.
On the one hand, from the perspective of a young boy, I can see why exploring Bombay Beach would be just about the coolest thing ever. On the other hand, from the perspective of an adult, the view of a father smoking while his kids play in the post-apocalyptic hellscape of the Salton Sea is hilarious.
After being on display at Burning Man, Randy Polumbo’s “Lodestar”—a modified aircraft, effectively—has come in for a landing at Bombay Beach, on the apocalyptic shores of the Salton Sea.
I’ve developed some odd tradition for epic landscape photography at the end of major holidays (as in this Christmas image)—perhaps it’s something about wanting the day to last forever.
The human-defined grid of towns has been laid into the ancient lakebed of Coachella Valley, but the places where the rough and natural shapes of the hills intersect it are good reminders that nature doesn’t much care about the orderly systems of people.
I’ve shown you a far different view of the wind farms at the northern end of Coachella Valley, but an aerial view at dawn provides better documentation of the project’s true scale, and its place in the fascinating geological setting of the valley.
Night falls and the well-watered communities give way to desert landscapes on the outskirts of Coachella Valley.
If ever a reminder was needed that large swaths of Coachella Valley would prefer to be desert, the stark shift that occurs at the border where artificial watering stops provides one.
A different kind of Rückensfiguren from my last post: Teenagers visiting a memorial along the curving roads of the Pines to Palms Highway, far above the desert of Coachella Valley.
Decaseconds 