Salton Sea, California

[Stew_Matthews]

I have been on a business trip to Los Angeles and had a couple of free days. I didn’t have anything planned but have been working on some photographs for something I was invited to contribute to in Chicago. I need to submit some photographs on the theme of age/decay. So I headed down interstate 10 to Salton Sea, a place I had visited some years ago. For non Californians and maybe non Americans it may be worth just mentioning some history about the place. It was created in the early 20th century as a result of flooding and became one of the largest lakes (not sure why it is called a sea) in the US. At one time it was home to an incredible ecosystem and hotels/towns were built around it. However, over the years, the salt content of the water has increased to such an extent that a lot of the fish have died and therefore the wildlife that lived on the fish have disappeared too. This has meant that the tourist industry has fallen off and there are many disused hotels/building around the Sea. There still are some beautiful areas left but I was setting out to capture some of the decaying structures. So if you are planning a day out – it really doesn’t look like this everywhere. I’ll probably use a couple of these photographs in a black and white version, but these will give you a sense of what I saw. It was interesting for me because I wouldn’t normally photograph this sort of thing. Hopefully one or two of you may find these interesting. (10 pics in this post - 6 in the next)