Saltscapes: The Kite Aerial Photography of Cris Benton

Our wonderful local bookstore, BookSmart, had a 20th anniversary sweepstakes recently. I ended up winning a copy of Saltscapes: The Kite Aerial Photography of Cris Benton (Heyday, 2013). It is a fabulous book with beautiful photographs of the south San Francisco Bay area, where some of the industrial salt evaporation ponds are being restored to their original marshland state. For over a decade I worked next to the bay and would walk among the sloughs when I wanted to take a break. It's a lovely area and these photographs show some of the beauty and the otherworldliness (at times) of the setting. I'm so glad I won the book and highly recommend it.

Links

• The books' publisher page
• Be sure to check out the PDF excerpt link from the publisher
• An interview with Benton and photos from the book at Berkeleyside
• More on Benson's kite aerial photography, with useful links
• Hidden Ecologies, a collaborative project Benson is involved in, including more fascinating links

Caption: Abandoned houses: This view of the north end of Drawbridge looking toward the south illustrates the tight siting of dwellings between the Union Pacific rail line and what was once a navigable marsh channel.
Picture source

The book has inspired me to do a post on Drawbridge, California, a ghost town in the San Francisco Bay that I toured in 1997. More on that in a few days...