Salt ponds from above Bay Area, California There's a few tricks that Willie and I use when we get inspiration for our photography but the 2 more popular tools are: 1) being inspired by photos other people have taken and 2) exploring Google Earth. Sometimes another photographer will have taken a similar photo that inspires us to want to explore that area and sometimes we find things on our own with the aid of satellite pictures provided by Google. When we go to a place, we'll pull up Google Earth and scroll around to see if there's anything interesting. For drone photography, this is a particular useful tip as you can get a sense of what the place will look like before going. We saw this particular "U" shaped bend in the river from Google Earth and knew we wanted to photograph it. Doing a little further research showed that at least one other photographer had photographed this before -- that was enough inspiration to convince us we should go check it out. We just loved how the shape of the bend here helped guide the eye through the photo, especially with the little fingers. The first time we visited here was on a foggy morning. The flat light allowed us to take photos and explore the area for quite a long time. But it also meant that the light was flat and not that interesting. We returned a few more times under better conditions and that's when the scene began to glow, as you can see the ground is picking up the golden sunset light. We also loved that the river was filled with yellow algae. I came back a few weeks later and the stream was completely clear, as different algae now lived in it due to the salinity of the water changing. DJI Mavic Pro 2 w/Hasselblad L1D-20c: 10.26mm, f/5.6, 1/30 sec, ISO 100
Flying the drone over the salt ponds has been a fun endeavor for the last month and a half. Willie and I would head out to the spot, fly 3 batteries worth of time, then pack up and go home. This particular stretch of land fascinated us because we loved the big "U" shape in the center. But I also loved how all the different streams seemed to connect together into one big "brain". In fact, some of the salt starts to look very brainy. Of course there's then the veins of the river coming off as if it's taking the juicy (yellow) blood to various parts of the body. DJI Mavic Pro 2 w/Hasselblad L1D-20c: 10.26mm, f/5, 1/30 sec, ISO 120
It's been hard to find motivation to photograph the Bay Area these days when most of the places I've explored a number of times. Willie and I have been trying to find new scenes to photograph, especially as our interests have shifted. When we both purchased drones in November, it opened new doors. We've been flying the drones over the Salt Ponds for almost 2 months now and it's been exciting to see how the salt ponds change over time. As the water drains from the ponds everything changes. These particular ponds are started to get new colors as the water dries up and only certain algae can survive. This particular night was supposed to have a nice sunset and I wanted something a little different -- particularly I was hoping for a red sky that would reflect back on the ponds and in the remaining streams. Although we only got a sliver of nice light, the hexagonal salt formations that now exist, thanks to the ponds having more time to dry, made for some nice compositions. DJI Mavic Pro 2 w/Hasselblad L1D-20c: 10.26mm, f/4.5, 1/240 sec, ISO 100
