Salton Sea – 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

Cracking Up

Heath OFee — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 14:10:55 +0000

When Rick Young turned off the highway and led us down a long dirt road towards the Salton Sea that ran next to an orange orchard, I wasn’t entirely sure that the location would work out. But as it turned out, this portion of the beach had some amazing photo ops and the six of us who made it down there each came away with some keepers.

A spent a good chunk of my time on this section of shoreline shooting towards the lake, but when I spotted this cracked earth and the mountains in the background I switched things up and shot in the opposite direction. I’m glad I did because as soon as I saw this long exposure on the LCD, I knew I had my shot of the day. Thanks for dragging us down that dirt road, Rick!

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

Dialed In

Heath OFee — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 14:07:15 +0000

This is a detail shot from the large abandoned warehouse I found in Niland, California. I really would have liked to get a shot looking straight at the dial, but it was too high on the wall for it to be feasible. Sometimes you just have to work with what you’re given

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

Feed Truck

Heath OFee — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 12:37:04 +0000

As cool as epic, expansive shots of entire rooms one may find while on an urbex trip are, it’s the little details that can really show the character and history of a place. This old shelf was clearly used to store keys on all those carefully bent nails. I wonder what the ‘876852’ key used to open…feel free to tell me your idea of what it may have been for

Canon EOS 50D, Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5, 18mm, 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

We’re Watching

Heath OFee — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 12:37:23 +0000

Back to the abandoned warehouse in Niland, California for today’s image. When I walked into this urbex heaven, as soon as I turned and looked to my right, these are the creepy graffiti eyes I was greeted with. I felt safer for the rest of my time there knowing I had a pair of watchful eyes looking out for me

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