The Salton Sea, and why it's so #$$#&* hard to shoot

Mjollnir

Lesson 1: with a premium level P&S w/like the LX5, w/it's great glass and wide angle capability, shooting monumentally things from up close, like in Yosemite Vally, is really easy. Esp. when covered in snow, ala a photo set I posted here about two weeks ago, because the contrast is high. Shooting monumentally huge things when they're far away, ala the Salton Sea, w/it's bizarre, otherwordly light, is REALLY hard.

Lesson 2: Shooting a place as big as the Salton Sea, when one is running late, and doesn't know the area, having never been there before, is really hard.

Lesson 3: I am NOT a wildlife photographer. I wanted to shoot the bizarre, post-apocalyptic falloutscapes of Bombay Beach (and believe me, it's like another planet there, worthy of it's own trip), but there were about 50 people with a video crew there, shooting some commercial, right where the stuff I wanted to shoot was. Men in fishnets, purple hair, green hair. THAT would have been worth shooting, but we moved on, as it was crowded. Anyhow the lesson is that, at the Salton Sea, if you're not shooting burned out remains, you will, by default and w/out exception, be shooting birds. The little ****ers are EVERYWHERE. They're like the brineflies at Mono Lake. Inescapable. Too numerous to count. ALWAYS in motion and always in frame. Hence, every shot that I took, although intended as a landscape, is an avianscape, by default. It's a lemonade-out-of-lemon sitch.

There are also tens of thousands of dessicated Tilapia corpses EVERYWHERE you go on any beach there. The smell is, um, noticeable. Billions of tiny shells that are very sharp, as well.

The light at Salton is incredible. Almost indescribable and like being on another planet. I will be back, better prepared, next weekend. It's pastel hues, beyond-description blues, bizarre 200m layer of particulate matter and ever-shifting clouds made me want to switch from manual to iA just because of the transient nature of every condition. In the following photos, I didn't do any color modifications. What you see is how it was as the camera captured it. I did, however, have a circ. polarizer on at all times.

Just to start off, the problem I mentioned: birds. This would have been an interesting landscape, with fading ridges, gauzy backgrounds, that odd particulate layer.... but no. It's about birds. I set the camera for ten second delay, and when I framed it, there were no birds. When the shutter went off, birds.



There is also a layer of beach, just after the fishcorpsescape and the skin-shredding shells, of pure bird and fish guano. One discovers this inadvertently, by walking to the water's edge. Hence, this.....



Becomes this...



Pelicans, pelicans everywhere. This one struck me because the one one the right is very dark where the light is bright, while the left ones are light.



The remains of the wharf and jetty of the long-dead North Shore Yacht Club. Note the (#$*%#)@ birds.





Last shot of the day, just south of the seawall, my first long exposures ever taken! I'd appreciate opinion on whether the crop or the original is better. Thanks!

Borderfox

One thing strikes me about all the pictures, they all looked uncropped. I think a different crop on most of them will really change them and take the horizon away from the middle of the pictures. Looks like a fantastic place

Thecageyone

# 2 is gorgeous. There's a few stray blots of black across the blue in the middle, probably birds, but I'd clone them out for a much cleaner image. the foreground light is lovely.

Some of them looked over cooked, especially the blue tones? Maybe a little blue desaturation will work on them.

Mjollnir

Borderfox wrote: »

One thing strikes me about all the pictures, they all looked uncropped. I think a different crop on most of them will really change them and take the horizon away from the middle of the pictures. Looks like a fantastic place

Thanks. Most, but not all, are uncropped, because (a) I don't mind the horizon in middle of the shot and (b) the place is HUGE. I have in the past framed shots, using Rof3rds, w/horizon either up or down in the shot, but then there's either an awful lot of water or and awful lot of sky in the shot as well. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't.

In any case, I'll be more prepared next weekend, and will take your advice w/me. It IS a phantasmagorically bizarre place.

Borderfox

For somewhere like that I would be shooting for three shot panoramas to give the idea of how vast the area is

Mjollnir

Borderfox wrote: »

For somewhere like that I would be shooting for three shot panoramas to give the idea of how vast the area is

You know, I would, and I am getting the 18mm wide angle attachment for the LX5, but I don't have any software for it. Panasonic demurs from including anything in their original kit, and I understand that Sony has the industry standard for panoramic 'stitching', AND they include it w/out extra charge w/their cameras. IN camera, no less.

Ciaran500

Mjollnir wrote: »

You know, I would, and I am getting the 18mm wide angle attachment for the LX5, but I don't have any software for it. Panasonic demurs from including anything in their original kit, and I understand that Sony has the industry standard for panoramic 'stitching', AND they include it w/out extra charge w/their cameras. IN camera, no less.

I wouldn't bother with any in camera stitching. Photoshop can do it and if you're looking for something free Microsoft ICE, Hugin and many others will do it for free. ICE is probably the most straight forward.

Mjollnir

Ciaran500 wrote: »

I wouldn't bother with any in camera stitching. Photoshop can do it and if you're looking for something free Microsoft ICE, Hugin and many others will do it for free. ICE is probably the most straight forward.

Thanks! Just downloaded the MS product.