The Most Serene Republic

The Salton Sea in California’s Colorado Desert is a remote, mysterious, sometimes disturbing country. Created by an engineering accident in 1905, it’s now the largest body of water in California (over 375 square miles) in the middle of one of the driest places in North America. In the mid 20th century the Sea experienced a frenetic land rush and tourist boom that long ago went bust. It became too saline and too smelly to support tourism. Fish died en masse. The sea flooded towns and then withdrew, leaving a corrosive, odiferous mud on everything. People left and never came back. Today, there’s almost nothing there except crumbling, abandoned infrastructure, broken and burned things, rust, trash, piles of fish and animal bones, and teeming flocks of migratory birds. Oh, and a couple of very tiny, very tenacious towns. But more than any of these things, the Salton Sea is made of miles and miles of blank serenity. It’s an empty spot on the map.

Nowadays, most of the few tourists who go to the Salton Sea on purpose go to photograph the scattered derelict buildings on the shores of the Sea, the feeling of armageddon, to capture in a titillating way futility and despair; or they go to see the rich and amazing bird life the Sea supports.

I go because I think it’s actually one of the most beautiful places on Earth. There are many such places, I know, but this one is mine. My most beautiful place on Earth. I have come here many times when I need to be reminded just how spiritually rejuvenating nature can be, and when I want the feeling of being truly alone to feel right and clean and inevitable. I don’t go to the armageddon shores anymore. I keep driving beyond them, beyond all the worry and loss, until I’m right here, where I took these pictures; my most beautiful place on Earth.

The Desert's Little Humiliations

The desert is full of little humiliations. It's so much bigger and stronger and more patient than anything man tries to impose on it. Yesterday Stephanie and I visited the Mojave to refresh our memories about just as how everything we put to sea eventually gets thrown back onto the shore, broken and fading, every imposition we make on the desert is similarly ephemeral and puny.

Big Head

A "ball head" is what landscape photographers use to connect their cameras to tripods. It's the business end of a tripod, and good tripods are crucial to landscape work. Ball heads must be smooth, reliable and strong. You don't want your heavy camera flopping down, you want it to remain pointed exactly where you aim it, even when you have a very long, heavy lens attached to it. Consumer-grade ball heads are prone to failure. Even when they work, tend to creep a little bit after you let go, changing your composition. Right now I can't think of anything more annoying.

Serious ball heads for serious photography tend to cost serious money... typically from $400 to $1,000. They are precisely machined by hand from expensive materials and manufactured in small quantities compared to consumer products. But recently as I was looking for a new head, an alternative came to my attention: the Sirui K-40x. This head is significantly less expensive than its competitors, yet seems to have all the quality, strength, fit, and finish it needs to do the job and be unobtrusive.

Like most professional ball heads, it comes in a soft case that doubles as a protective cover when mounted.

This head has only two control knobs: a friction clutch and a panning lock. The friction clutch employs an integrated governor that allows you to set the minimum friction so that even when loosened all the way, the head won't allow the camera to flop around, but will allow it to be precisely positioned.

The one-knob solution to setting the friction works perfectly, and removes the annoyance of trying to figure out in the dark which knob to reach for. It is a major improvement over two-knob heads and I will never buy another ball head without this feature. Set correctly and unlocked, you can smoothly position the camera without any play, yet have enough firmness to keep the camera from falling over. The friction is firm but smoothly yielding and the composition can be framed precisely. Plus, you can't accidentally remove all friction from the head; it will stay at the safe minimum. When you lock it down, it responds with remarkable solidity and doesn't creep from where you placed it. (Cheap heads change position minutely as you tighten them.) The smaller panning lock works as expected and because of its size and location, it can't be confused with the friction clutch in the dark.. 

Like other professional ball heads, this one is large (the ball has a 54mm diameter) and relatively light. It's made from a block of machined aluminum. Small ball heads are fine for casual use and wide angles, but longer, heavier lenses with more magnification require bigger, stronger ball heads like this to steady the camera completely and prevent blurry pictures.

At the top of the ball head where it meets the camera is a clamp designed to hold the Arca-Swiss style quick release plate which is screwed to the bottom of the camera. This is a simple screw mechanism, reliable and convenient. On my camera, rather than a quick release plate, I have added an L bracket. It also fits in the clamp on the ball head, but allows me to mount the camera in either landscape or portrait mode. It also prevents unwanted rotation of the clamp where it meets the camera, which can happen with heavier lenses... the plate begins to unscrew itself from the camera when there is torsion.

L brackets should be custom fit for your exact camera model... never buy a generic L bracket as it will only cause annoyance and you won't use it.

This then is the Sirui K-40X professional ball head. Only time will determine if it can last for years like other professional ball heads. Sirui thinks it can, which is why the head comes with an astonishing 6 year warranty. So far, I'm very pleased with this crucial piece of gear, not even accounting for the reasonable price.

California's Central Coast

It's a gorgeous place. It seduced Henry Miller, lured in Jack Kerouac, and has bewitched generations of travelers with its dangerously beautiful foggy coastal cliffs and its rugged canyons brimming with towering red and green redwood forests. Stephanie and I go there from time to time to hike and unwind; we enjoyed camping there last weekend to celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary. The old cliché "pictures can't convey the beauty..." applies to Big Sur.

Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park

Pfeiffer Beach

Sunset in the ubiquitous fog

McWay Falls

Oh no you didn't...

Infinite elephant seals

That rock has been dealing with this for a thousand years.

Yes, I took a picture of my camera taking a picture. Who knows how far down the rabbit hole goes?

Good fences make good neighbors?

Pfeiffer Arch

No Professional Photographers Allowed

This morning I decided to have some camera fun, so I went to the local university's botanic gardens. There are signs all over the place telling us there are no professional photographers allowed, per University of California policy. Well, I guess they haven't gotten the memo yet... the definition of "professional photographer" has gotten pretty slippery these days. Not having lights or models or even a tripod with me, I went on in and shot. I was more or less the only person there anyway. But I do have a new policy here at home: no UC regents allowed.

European honeybee

Gulf fritillary

Datura, also know as loco weed or jimson weed

Prickly pear

Busy bees at a cactus flower

At the Fair

A visit to the Los Angeles County Fair. I decided to do a little something different there. Often I eschew black and white photography because I really value good color; monotone seems needlessly crippled. There are better ways to simplify a scene and emphasize essential shapes and tones. Cutting out the color information can seem stilted and contrived to me. But, sometimes I ignore myself.

Here are a few shots.

Strut Your Mutt Los Angeles

I was fortunate yesterday to attend Best Friends Animal Society's  fundraiser, "Strut Your Mutt Los Angeles." I was asked to shoot the event for California State Parks, who was hosting it at one of their parks. Helping animals is a great cause, very close to home. We have three dogs and two cats, all rescues, and would have more if we could. I've only gone through a few of the raw photos so far, but here are a few.

Think Small!

This labor day weekend I decided to take some pictures of true laborers... the ants. Nothing seems to work harder or more consistently than Harvester Ants, Pogonomyrmex barbarous. I found these ants in a wild desert place, and I hope you enjoy the very tiny details on these extreme macro photographs.

Bellyflower

These little guys are the size of a lentil. I can't help shooting them every time I see them hiking in the desert. I mean, when I'm hiking. The flowers are not hiking.

Communication With Compensation

I was delighted to provide image licenses to several new clients in June. It's a delight not just because it helps pay the bills, but also because it's gratifying to know that these little things I do to communicate can also help other people communicate as well. In its most basic essence, I think photography is simply a variety of communication; it's very dense, pliable, sometimes visceral and almost always extremely efficient. If strangers or even companies can use a photo to help communicate something of their own, then the photo must be a little broader in scope than merely personal. It means on the level of communication, the photo is a success.

Here's a selection of some of the licenses to new clients for June. I won't blog about who licensed what every single month, but I did want to highlight some licenses from time to time:

"Trio," a picture of Stephanie, Obie, and Cassie was licensed by Hughes Leahy Karlikovic, a Saint Louis ad agency.

"Desert Signpost," a picture of Stephanie being curious on a remote road in Desert Center, California, was licensed by a Dutch energy company called NUON.

Stanford Business Magazine licensed this fisheye image of wildflowers from Point Lobos, California.

"Immanent," taken in the Mojave north of Joshua Tree National Park, was grabbed by Styria Multimedia gmbh, a magazine publisher in Austria; as they say so beautifully, Die Styria Multi Media GmbH & Co KG ist eines der größten Österreichischen Magazinverlage mit Sitz in Wien und Heimat rund einer Million österreichischer Leserinnen und Leser. So a million readers. Cool.