A Ghosttown Photoshoot at the Salton Sea, California

October 9, 2014 · by kelleylouise · in Food & Travel

When I first mentioned the Salton Sea to my friend Sinem and photographer Sinem Yazici, her eyes widened and she grabbed my hand.

“We have to shoot there,” she announced.

The original Instagram photo I took and showed Sinem, which inspired our trip.

At the time, I encouraged the idea but never thought it would become a reality.

But a year and a half later, I found myself putting on make-up in an RV parked in what felt like a ghost town in the middle of nowhere with Sinem outside scouting locations.

We had actually had a hard time finding the exact location, as I didn’t remember exactly where I had been on my other visit (the Salton Sea is California’s largest lake and covers 362 square miles). Sinem had her heart set on shooting at the abandoned location, and I knew that there was just one area that had that vibe to it. After circling around the north-end of the lake and heading in from the main road at every chance we could get, the sun was quickly setting and we were losing our daylight to find the shoot location. But when I remembered that I had Instagrammed the photo, I was able to do a little detective work and find the exact location. (If you’re wondering where we were shooting, you can scroll back about 140 weeks in my feed )

For those of you unfamiliar with the Salton Sea, it’s located about two hours southeast of LA or two hours northeast of San Diego (close to Palm Springs and Palm Desert). The lake was created by accident in the 1900s when the Colorado River overflowed through an irrigation canal and spilled into a previously dry lake bed. By the 1950s, the lake was marketed as a resort town (“a beach in the desert!”) and became a huge tourist attraction. Vacationers flocked in and many rushed to buy property in the area. But none of that lasted. The area surrounding the sea was never meant to sustain a lake, especially when you consider the half a million acres of agricultural land surrounding it. Run-off and pollution into the lake ran into the sea, and by the 70s, the water had become contaminated, the sand became a graveyard for dead fish and tourists vanished from the area. Today, you still see remnants of the different eras of visitors.

Behind the scenes with Sinem Yazici

But perhaps the most interesting component to me is that there are actually homes surrounding the area. The California government closed the State Park to visitors last year, but tourists still head in out of curiosity. To get to the beach area, you have to drive through a section of homes, cross over a chain that’s been long-since broken and then make your way through the dirt and sand, most of which becomes comprised almost entirely of fish bones once you near the water. The experience is, to say the least, pretty disgusting (not to mention slightly terrifying to not step on any nails), but I’m beyond happy with how the photos turned out.