Willie and I had been flying our drones here for quite a while and had really hoped to get a red sky that would reflect back down in the streams. When we first started visiting, the streams were mostly clear, as the water levels were higher and the salinity less. But as the water evaporated only certain algae could survive, giving off an orange glow to the water. I couldn't help but think of the Nickelodeon show "Keenan & Kell" when I saw this. The line "Who loves Orange soda?! Ka-ka-ka-Kell loves orange soda!" kept popping into my head. DJI Mavic Pro 2 w/Hasselblad L1D-20c: 10.26mm, f/4.5, 1/30 sec, ISO 100
When you spend the past 8 years photographing the same couple-hundred mile area, it can be hard to find the motivation to keep taking photos of the same things. Seascapes: check. Cityscapes: check. Flowers: check. Throw in a wrinkle, though, and things get interesting again. So when DJI started making drones that could take amazing still photography, I was interested. Willie and I both picked up drones during Black Friday and we've been re-exploring areas from the skies now. It's amazing how the scene can change when you get just a hundred feet off the ground. Looking down on the ground shows a different angle, and most particularly, allows you to see the shape and texture of the whole landscape. Rivers and streams whose true length gets lost from the ground, creates amazing shapes that dazzle when viewed from the sky. Willie and I arrived at these salt flats for sunrise after visiting the same spot a few days earlier at sunset. We knew the salt flats were creating some amazing textures and we hoped the sunrise glow would give some beautiful and unique light. As the water drains from these salt flats, the little streams left behind create some amazing textures. As the salt builds up on the edges it can catch the light from the rising sun, giving the stream-banks a bit of an orange glow. I loved how you can see that here as the "fingers" extend out, ready to grab you. DJI Mavic Pro 2 w/Hasselblad L1D-20c: 10.26mm, f/5.6, 1/50 sec, ISO 100
One of the reasons why Willie and I keep going back to the salt ponds with our drones is that we keep finding new scenes to explore. As we return with different lighting conditions we'll explore both new and old scenes to see how they've changed. And as the weeks progress, the ponds drain water and new shapes and compositions are created. We found this particular patch of drying stream when we explored a different area of the park. This was right near our new launch-zone and both of us spent some time exploring the different angles that this bend in the river created. I liked this particular spot because it had a combination of so many things: a curving stream, white salt, some vegetation, salt shapes, and different colors of plant-life. Particularly I loved how the red plants popped out and matched the orange glow that the salt flats picked up. DJI Mavic Pro 2 w/Hasselblad L1D-20c: 10.26mm, f/5.6, 1/40 sec, ISO 100
