Salton Sea

Today a fellow photographer and I packed up the car and headed out to the Salton Sea so I could scout locations for an upcoming shoot. The Salton Sea is actually an inland saltwater lake that was formed (in its most recent incarnation) in 1905 when the Colorado River breached its banks and filled the Imperial basin, for a period of almost two years. After awhile it became the playground of the rich, famous, and also just many families trying to escape from L.A. to spend time fishing, boating, or just enjoying the salty brine of the sea.



Unfortunately the good times didn't last for the sea or the people who inhabit the area surrounding it. Due to the fact it has no real water flow with an inlet and outlet, the salinity level in the sea started to rise because of evaporation, causing most fish species to die off. Also with the seas close proximity to the all of the farming in Imperial county pesticides, fertilizer and other chemicals started polluting the water. To make matters worse the New river dumps directly in to the sea, the New river being one of the most polluted rivers in the U.S.A.





All of these factors make this one of the most striking landscapes to photograph in. As soon as you reach the shoreline your hit with the fact that the shore isn't covered in sand its covered in fish scales and bones, and I don't mean just a layer of them above the sand, I mean as far as you can dig you'll be digging through fish bones. The other amazing thing about the area is the amount of abandoned buildings, cars, trucks, and even towns. It really has an otherworldly sense to it. I didn't really get a good amount of time to make images today because most of my time was spent driving looking for locations but here are a few images I made. To view more go to: http://www.photoshelter.com/c/andrewfoulk/gallery/Salton-Sea-Nov09/G0000yn_YwnYN8dI/

Clean-up

Yesterday I spent my morning hiking through overgrown Manzanita bushes, on paths that were never intended to be walked on by humans. The area I was in is just a stones throw away from Temecula. In fact you can even see Old Town Temecula from one of the spots I was at. This area however is completely remote in the middle of De Luz, no real houses near-by, and yet somehow it was littered with trash. That brings me to the reason I was there. To cover a group of volunteers do an annual trash removal. The area I was at was just a small portion of the area involved in the clean-up. It encompassed the entire 26.2-mile Rancho Santa Margarita watershed, and yet in this huge expanse of wild area dotted with orchards and ranches, the organizers expected to collect over 10 tons of trash.



I am always amazed at how inconsiderate people can be, and when I got to the site I wasn't let down. I found the volunteers hiking through a dried up waterfall pulling out broken remnants of old televisions, pulling beer bottle after beer bottle from the soil, and placing it all on to a abandoned couch. It turns out the road at the top of the hill is a favorite hang-out for teens to get drunk at, and after a few what could be more fun than a good old game of "Let throw stuff off the edge of this cliff and see what happens". Well the good news is the volunteers pulled out a good portion of what was there, and they will be back again next year to do the same. Hopefully with less work to do.