So yesterday I took a last-minute trip out to the Salton Sea with Nate & Jay.

Been there a dozen times, still think it’s fascinating. I’ve shot some of the structures and architecture out there a jillion times, but only a few times did I feel that I was really capturing the place in a way that communicated how it moved me. So I thought I’d try something different this time – something I’ve always wanted to do, but never had the gear to pull off.
So we started off by going up to the North Shore, where this building sits: (for those of you that have Google Earth, this building is located HERE)

Hmmm… kinda cool, but still not entirely what I’m after… So we went up to the ever-popular Bombay Beach (Google Earth .kmz file), where the salty sludge swallowed up both of Nate’s shoes (sorry, the camera was in the car at the time 🙂 )
Bombay Beach has a section of town that, from what I gathered, flooded in 1983. It’s really a fascinating wasteland, and I love the surreal feeling I was able to create in these photos by lighting up some of the derelict structures:

Wow! Super-cool, I thought… but then we went, on Nate’s recommendation, to a place I had just recently learned about – Salvation Mountain (.kmz file here). Salvation Mountain is a 24-year folk art project that’s the work of a single 72 year old man named Leonard. It’s basically a side of a hill that’s been built-up with sticks, tires, hay bales, and adobe, and covered with 100,000 (!) gallons of household paint. Inside and out, it’s covered with messages of christian love, biblical scriptures, and abstract representations of rivers, trees, flowers, hills, etc – all created out of stuff found in the desert, and lots and lots of paint. Really amazing…

I was really blown away by the place… reminded me a lot of the Cathedral of Junk in Austin… If you ever are out in Niland (yeah right!) you need to check it out…
Last but not least – a wide shot showing how all that stuff was shot – two speedotron 1500w/s packs, four heads, and a 5D… yeah!