Bombay Beach – heath ofee dot com

Hellmouth

Heath OFee — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 14:10:02 +0000

One of the great things about shooting with a group of other photographers is the sharing of knowledge and ideas. New techniques that you may not have tried before come to light and subjects you may not have photographed otherwise make their way onto your memory card.

One of the downsides of shooting with a group of other photographers is that, inevitably, you end up with some similar compositions. This is the case with my shot today. My good buddy, Mike Olbinski, posted a frame of this same location with a slightly different composition a little while ago. I absolutely love his shot, but I couldn’t just let mine sit on the hard drive – so Mike, please forgive me

As for the title – I thought the creepy, salt encrusted old pier could pass for the ferry dock where one would begin their journey across the River Styx into Hades. Setting off across that eerily calm water towards the burning sunset in the distance would certainly creep me out!

Equipment:
– Canon EOS 5D Mark II
– Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L
– B+W 77mm 10 stop ND Filter

Curvature

Heath OFee — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 14:10:46 +0000

My previous visit to the Salton Sea area yielded a ridiculous amount of images – none of which contained any clouds. I spent the better part of three days shooting in and around the salt-lake, and the entire time there wasn’t a cloud in sight – ridiculous.

Thankfully, for my second visit a couple of weeks ago, we were blessed with a day full of clouds that had potential to deliver a stunning sunset. We were not disappointed. As the sun started to dip below the low mountains, we were treated to some pretty great reds and oranges in the clouds.

This shot is of the curving shoreline of Bombay Beach.

Equipment:
– Canon EOS 5D Mark II
– Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L
– B+W 77mm 10 stop ND Filter

Lone Sentinel

Heath OFee — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 14:10:00 +0000

Wow. I can’t believe it’s been almost an entire month since I’ve posted anything here! I’ve been in a bit of a photographic funk for the last little while, so I didn’t feel much like shooting or spending much time on Twitter and around blogs – but I should be back in at least some capacity now.

This past weekend I had the pleasure of shooting in Joshua Tree National Park and around the Salton Sea with an awesome group of guys: Mike Olbinski, Chris DeAngelis, Rick Young, Chris Frailey, and Doug Wise. I was down in the Palm Springs area for a week of vacation and let these dudes (who are from Phoenix and the Fresno area) that I was thinking of camping one night in Joshua Tree and taking some photos, of course. These brave souls agreed to meet me, and we proceeded to freeze our butts off as temperatures dipped below freezing overnight! Despite the cold, we had a great time and I think we all came away with some shots we’re quite proud of. Make sure you stay tuned to all of our blogs for the photo goodness that is sure to come.

The first image I’ll share with you is from Bombay Beach on the Salton Sea (some of you may remember my series from this location last year). It was great to visit this unique location again – and doubly awesome to have some clouds in the sky this time!

Equipment:
– Canon EOS 5D Mark II
– Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L
– B+W 77mm 10 stop ND Filter

Encrusted

Heath OFee — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 13:10:01 +0000

Back to the Salton Sea we go!

Honestly, I absolutely can’t wait to get back to this place and shoot some more. I keep going back to these images hoping to be able to scrape out a few more that are post-worthy, and I think I have a few more up my sleeve yet.

The feeling of complete desolation when on location at Bombay Beach was both calming and disturbing. The fact that people once spent countless summers playing on this beach and swimming in this lake is absolutely appalling considering the condition it is in today. Hundreds of dead fish line the shores and the salt levels are multiples of that in sea water. Crazy. Documenting this was a great experience, and I hope to continue what I’ve started in the future.

Canon EOS 50D, Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5, 10mm, F 16, ISO 100

The Walking Dead

Heath OFee — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 13:15:53 +0000

My wife and I just finished watching the first season of ‘The Walking Dead’ a couple of days ago, and man, did we love it! Shame it was only a teaser at 6 episodes, but it was still pretty great nonetheless. Fantastic characters, a great post-apocalyptic style storyline, and some of the best looking zombies I’ve ever seen. If you haven’t seen it, make sure you check it out.

Inspired by the imagery in ‘The Walking Dead’, I decided to give today’s shot from Bombay Beach a bit of a post-apocalyptic/comic book/zombie feel. I definitely got a bit of a creepy vibe from the location when I was there, so I’m pretty excited with how this one turned out. As usual, all my stylization of this image was done in onOne PhotoTools. Honestly, since I picked up their full suite of plugins a few months ago, I don’t think I’ve published a single photo that hasn’t been touched in one way or another by an onOne plugin. It really is a great tool to have in the bag.

There’s some good news if you don’t have the suite yet: until March 24th you can purchase the entire Perfect Photo Suite 5.5 + HDR Express for $399. This is a seriously good deal, so make sure you check it out!

Canon EOS 50D, Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5, 10mm, F 11, ISO 100

Salton Sunset

Heath OFee — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 13:15:42 +0000

Even in the most barren and desolate locations, one can still find beauty. I spent a good deal of my time in and around the Salton Sea hunting for the most interesting urbex locations I could find, but it’s always important to keep all your photography options open. Bombay Beach was absolutely full of old, decrepit structures and I had an absolute blast shooting them, but as the sun was setting I forced myself to change gears and quickly switched into landscape mode. As a number of my photog buddies have mentioned in blogs before me, it can be valuable not to be pigeon-holed into one single genre of photography. Diversity is a good thing. Experimentation is a good thing. Always keep your thinking cap on, and be ready to switch gears whenever that next great opportunity presents itself.

Canon EOS 50D, Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5, 10mm, F 11, ISO 100

Purple

Heath OFee — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 13:56:09 +0000

During my one evening at Bombay Beach, I unwittingly composed and shot almost the exact same scene at two different times. The first was while the sun was still up, although low in the sky and the second was after the sun had set about 30 minutes later. I didn’t realize I had duplicated the scene until I started processing the photo you see below yesterday afternoon.

While I still enjoy the first image of the scene, I absolutely LOVE this version. I opted for a cooler colour palette to accentuate the blues and purples and used FocalPoint to blur out some of the foreground to really lead the viewer to the old stanchions in the water. I hope you enjoy this one as much as I do.

Canon EOS 50D, Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5, 12mm, F 11, ISO 100, 0.3 sec

Salton Sea – Leaning

Heath OFee — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 13:51:50 +0000

I’m not entirely sure what this old, rusted barrel would have been used for back in the day, so if you have any ideas, feel free to let me know. This structure is one of the only things still standing on the waterfront at Bombay Beach. Most of the other old houses and trailers have completely caved in and decayed over the years…I should have a couple shots of those coming in the near future.

The one thing that made it difficult to shoot at this location was the nasty ground conditions. From the photo below, it may appear as though the ground is just a firm, salty crust, but what you don’t see is the one or two inches of soft mud that lies just below the surface. The day I went to Bombay Beach, I did not have the appropriate footwear for tramping around in the mud, so I was unable to get some of the shots I would have liked. I’ll be making my way back there better prepared on my next trip to California.

Canon EOS 50D, Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5, 11mm, F 16, ISO 100, 1/50 sec

Salton Sea – Tripled

Heath OFee — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 13:57:26 +0000

So, when setting up and taking this shot, I purposely tried to get a double sunburst effect through the reflection in the water…however, I did not even see the third tiny sunburst until I got the image into Lightroom. Happy accidents, gotta love ’em.

This is a shot from Bombay Beach, home of this shot. While I was there, I ran into a former local who lived in the area as a child. She had fond memories of playing on the beach and swimming in the sea all summer long. Looking at this beach now, it’s hard to believe that people once enjoyed it as a recreation area.

Canon EOS 50D, Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5, 10mm, F 16, ISO 100, 1/100 sec

Nasty and Delicious

Heath OFee — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 14:12:11 +0000

Today, I thought I’d take you all back to the Salton Sea for some delicious urbex. This is a shot from Bombay Beach which is quite possibly the creepiest little town I’ve ever been through. It’s set up in a small grid pattern and probably measures 10 streets by 10 streets. There are still some people living there, but most of the houses and garages have either fallen completely apart or are in the process of slowly decaying. I really wanted to explore all of the amazing urbexy goodness, but to be honest, I was scared of being chased off by some crazy person with a shotgun. Probably an unnecessary fear…but you never know

Just over the hill from the main town, there’s an old beach with some completely burned/salted over homes and trailers. What was once a nice little beach is now completely abandoned and littered with dead fish. It’s a bit sad, but makes for some very interesting images.

Canon EOS 50D, Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5, 10mm, F 16, ISO 100