Desert Hot Springs and Garbage

This past weekend I went to Desert Hot Springs with my girlfriend. We went to visit her dad at his desert home that backs up to a mountainous and plateau landscape. The neighborhood is rather fancy, and behind the homes is a long dirt road that can be taken over the mountains into the next town. There is not a lot out at her dad's place besides a golf club, it is a beautiful house, with a pool and hot tub. There is no immediate city right near by. We were there watching her brothers TV premier called Secret Worlds Michael Arbuthnot. It was a 6 hour extravaganza! While the shows were amazing, I needed to take a break from watching the tube.

Sometimes I get antsy, and I need to do something creative if I have not shot in a few days. I was feeling antsy! So, I decided to go on a nature walk and check-out the dramatic desert landscape. I started by shooting the mountain side with the long road going up and over, then I realized I was kind of in the middle of nowhere, and the desert was covered in garbage. People come and dump all their crap out in the desert. There was a shopping cart, numerous old tires, clothes, even a car someone left on the hill side. It made me kind of sad so many people use the desert as their own personal dump.

I own a book called Thinker Toys, and it is full of creative exercises. One of the exercises is to pick one color for the day, and only look for that color in your daily routine. If you were to pick red, then you would see the red stop sign, the red lipstick smear on your car seat, the red scab on your elbow... It opens up your mind to new ways of looking. I decided to only photograph the trash I could find on my desert hike. It was a rather interesting exercise. I am unsure how great these photos are, but I like them and I think they are rather poetic. Even on a desert hike where you think you would find very little traces of people, you can't escape traces of mankind, especially his garbage.