Narrow sticks emerge at regular intervals from the water, silhouetted in the reflected sunset, raising more questions than they can answer along the shoreline of the evaporating Salton Sea.
HDR Photography
When I added the “Ω” to the title of this image, I imagined endings across multiple dimensions of time: Certainly, a sunset is the end of a day, but I was also thinking on the longer scale of how the slow march of evaporation and desert climate are continuously shrinking the Salton Sea. In a more personal sense, this was likely to be my last visit to the Sea—at least in anything like its current state. All of those combined finalities made this one worthy of being the omega.
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!
After a summer spent under construction to fully overhaul the pond, work is finally complete and our city park looks more beautiful than ever. In the distance, the State Capitol is lit by the last of the warm early-autumn sunshine.