Never has so dramatic a sky of natural beauty been accompanied by so bland a human foreground of golf courses and subdivisions, but that’s the paradox of California for you.
Ultimate California Sky
Tag: California
Golden Gate Bridge from the Other Side
Monday’s post brought me back to the epic imagery of the Bay Area that I suspect I took a bit for granted back when we were starting Decaseconds in 2011. Convincing oneself that one is a photographer is easy when these are the views—but I’m glad I had the potency of these places to get me through those awkward early years of developing as a photographer.*
*Apologies for the wordplay.
Blissful Picnic
A weird spate of “Bay Area weather”—cloudy and rainy in the morning, bright and sunny in the afternoon, chilly but not cold—has brought moments like these, picnicking on the grounds of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, back to my mind.
The Old Indio
Dawn light illuminates the old Indio, California—a farming city of date plantations and strange water projects. In the distance, the oncoming scourge of sprawling subdivisions may signal the end of this particular era.
Sunrise on L&G
The bright rooftops in the foreground are L&G Desert Store, a local grocery established in 1979, an ongoing representation of what Indio was during an earlier era, before it was encrusted with subdivisions.
Date Palms in the Rain
Winter rain in Coachella Valley brings deep, somber hues to the monoculture arrays of date palms. I usually aim for depth and variety in my images, with a sense of definite space, so it’s an engaging game to depart from that and focus on a single plane and hypnotic pattern.
A “Nope” Cloud Over Coachella
A terrifying cloud (I swear, it makes sense) is the antagonist of “Nope,” and I saw echoes of that shape in this cloud above the San Jacinto Mountains and the Empire Polo Club.
Sunset on 2025
We’ve reached the end of 2025 and I’ll celebrate with what I think is one of my best shots of the year—and also just chronologically one of the last shots of the year. The tiny camper van and far-off lights add a sense of scale, saying “goodbye” to the distant events of that past time. Happy New Year!
Swing Is Dry Now
The Bombay Beach Ruins is a sculpture garden on the shallow shores of the Salton Sea, and this particular swing is the site of some of my favorite pictures—but the gradual evaporation of the sea has stranded a symbol of whimsy and magic on the beach as, well, just a regular swing now.
Ending the Season with the San Jacinto Mountains
Though the tiny lights of the Coachella Valley set the scale for the mighty size of the San Jacinto Mountains, even that range is dwarfed by the mighty scope and expanse of the sunset.
Gray Day at Pacific Beach
Though sun and fun and surf (and turf?) may be the core of the SoCal identity, even Pacific Beach gets a gray winter day.
Convention Crossing Crowd
After a nighttime poster session, crowds of chemists issued forth from the San Diego Convention Center and across the tracks to the Gaslamp Quarter.
Bubble City
The enormous interior halls of the San Diego Convention Center are far beyond the size necessary for most of the American Chemical Society presentations, so these pop-up tents divide the space in an excitingly futuristic way.
BNSF Paint Job?
A childhood spent with a bedroom window facing the train tracks built a skill for identifying train engine paint jobs, but the intervening years of mergers and the geographical distance between Illinois and California have diminished the intense recognition that would have had me swear that black, orange, and yellow meant a BNSF engine.
Many Rails
So many almost-parallel lines in this image (both rail and power) gives it a disorienting quality.
Decaseconds 