I don’t take many landscape shots so it was a bit of a surprise and fun for me to have a black and white photo of mine of a dry lake get selected for the White Exhibition at the Blank Wall Gallery in Athens, Greece.
The photo titled, Every Day is a Blank Slate, was also a nominee in the Minimalism category in the World Annual Photography 2025 ReFocus Awards (to see the photo, scroll down to “Minimalism” and click on “View more of Minimalism” three times as it’s one of the last photos shown in the category).
It also marks the third gallery showing I’ve had in Greece lately, one is the Chania International Photography Festival last July that I wrote about in the post: Greece is the word. The other is the upcoming, 4th Black & White Photography Festival in Athens in February.
I love the desert and will take any excuse to visit one. I took this photo years ago when I was filming a scene for a short. Unlike the close-to-Los-Angeles-dry-lakes such as El Mirage, it’s very remote. The day we were there we were the only humans in sight. No cars, no houses, nothing. It was very eerie and exciting at the same time.
The strangest thing was the deafening silence. Especially for a city dweller. No traffic, gun shots or screamers of any kind were heard. I didn’t realize how comforting those sounds are until they are absent.
To get there it’s about a 14 mile drive north of Barstow on a fairly bumpy dirt road. While the dry lake itself is completely devoid of human life, on the way there we passed a few cabins and small houses with scattered junk surrounding them and a couple of humorous signs. I mean really, just because they’re slow doesn’t mean you should shoot them.
A little further down the road and another funny sign. Or, signs rather. A perfect example of city planning at its finest.
It does make me wonder, if I punched in the names of the cross streets in the photo above, would Google Maps steer me in the right direction? Would Waze get it right? I guess I’ll have to go back to find out.
All in all, it was quite a memorable trip, with a rare landscape photo landing in an exhibition in Greece.
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