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La Brea Tar Pits

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I started focusing just on the oil slicks – I’m a sucker for easy abstract images. I made several compositions.
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I started focusing just on the oil slicks – I’m a sucker for easy abstract images. I made several compositions.

  • This is a pretty uninspired shot of the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles. I was always fascinated by the Tar Pits as a kid when I learned about them in school. If you don’t know, the Tar Pits are where oil and methane have oozed up from the earth for tens of thousands of years. The oil is in the form of asphalt and it created slicks where over millennia, animals have got stuck in the muck, died and became fossils. Thousands of fossils have been excavated including many of the giant mammals that roamed North America such as Mammoths, Saber Toothed Tigers, Dire Wolves, Bears, and Giant Sloths. Anyway, I had always wanted to check it out, and finally did when I was in LA for a few days – this is right in the heart of LA. This photo shows some models of mammoths in a reenactment of one of them getting trapped in the Tar Pit with another trying to help and a little one watching. It’s evocative, but wasn’t very interesting for me to photograph. <br /> But, I did notice that the oil slicks created cool iridescent patterns on top of the water.
  • When combined with reflections of the scene, I found something more interesting to me to shoot. I like this shot because of the multiple layers – the water with the iridescent oil slick, the reflection of the mammoth and city scene with the crane making an odd juxtaposition, and the methane bubbling up.
  • I found I was more interested in making things abstract.
  • I started focusing just on the oil slicks – I’m a sucker for easy abstract images. I made several compositions.
  • When I got home to process them I played around with color balance and various settings to bring out different color arrangements. Reminds me of the kind of marbling on paper you find in old book covers and end pages. Also like closeups of petrified wood, agates, and other minerals. But I wondered if this could go somewhere further.
  • I noticed that the two-dimensional oil patterns could take on a three-dimensional quality. I decided to explore that.
  • I also took the color to extremes and found that with selective adjustments - mostly just dodging and burning - that the 3D illusion could be greatly enhanced creating I don’t know what, but for me an evocative fluid landscape. This process reminded me how powerful a tool dodging and burning – selective brightening and darkening - can be for images whether they are abstract or more conventional.
  • The final image is a straight out of camera version of the Blue shot, you can toggle those two back and forth to see the difference.<br /> So, I finally got to go to the Tar Pits, was a little disappointed while I was there, but ended up discovering some imagery I couldn’t have imagined without the exploration.
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