HDR Photography
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.
New York was once famous for its oysters, grown in the harbor—a truly unbelievable number of them. Looking over the pier towards the still-glowing skyline of downtown Manhattan, I guess I’m not surprised they’d make an appropriate substrate for oyster growth.
Huge population growth in the American West led to a lot of new construction; I see the same thing in my remote area of Northern New York. Unlike up here, where storms and seasonal temperature cycles destroyed many of those structures after they were no longer useful, this partially inhabited area in Utah remains well-preserved.
Traveling through the Adirondacks means passing the semi-abandoned cabins that dot the roads. I particularly liked the image of a basketball hoop hanging above a driveway entombed in three feet of snow.
During our time in Zulu Nyala (in eastern South Africa), we visited the set where the film “I Dreamed of Africa” was shot. Since the movie was finished, the area has been used for some other purposes, but it’s largely intact (if abandoned) in the state it was when it was last used. The benches and chairs are welcoming, even amid the overgrown grass, but in places you find the strange artifacts of the set’s true purpose. One-way mirrors and weird hiding-places for cameras are all over the place.
Just around the corner in my neighborhood, across the parking lot of the Energy Biosciences Building, is this little slice of Downtown Berkeley neighborhood. The mixture of tacky, earthquake-proofed 1960s architecture, charming older apartment buildings, abandoned structures, and sprinkling of trees make it home.
For every bustling San Francisco street, there’s a quiet alleyway like this one. The details of the setting at sunset really jump out: the cracked concrete and lumpy pavement, the intricate fire escapes and the peeling paint. Ninja Turtles are coming out of that manhole cover at any moment.
On the same European adventure to the alpine village of Obergurgl in Tyrol, Austria, I was out for a walk when I captured this shot of a creek running near the village in the process of freezing over. The ice is interesting to look at but the semi-abandoned outbuilding on the bank. It doesn’t appear to be in active service, as evidenced by the partially ajar door, nor is there an obvious way to get down to the entrance, though perhaps without the snow and ice there’s path down the cliff face or maybe even some sort of connection to a cave in the cliff. One can only guess at what function this building does or once did serve.
Decaseconds 