It has been a long time since I have worked on a photo shoot at the Salton Sea North Shore. The North Shore is located on the east side of the Salton Sea off of Highway 111. It was once home to the North Shore Beach Yacht Club, which opened in 1962 and closed in 1984 because the Salton Sea salinity levels rose. Once it was a meca for sports fishing, an oasis in the middle of the dry Mojave Desert. Today it is a decaying relic from the past, the beach is covered with bones of dead and dying fish. The bait and tackle building is melting in the hot desert sun, anything of value has long since been removed by thieves. However there is new life at the Salton Sea, a newly restored Community Center now overlooks the sea. There is also the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge Complex in the same area.
We made base camp at a dirt parking lot adjacent to the Community Center. It was a mild winter day in the seventies with a slight breeze. I parked my RV and proceeded to get everything ready for the crew, setting up tables, chairs and a generator for the cater. The cater on this job was Foxy Catering 760 641 4233, Jenny crew stayed on set and made breakfast and lunch on site, each day we had a different menu items
. Since I worked with Jenny before she had some of my favorites ready for me, like granola and fresh fruit. The crew arrived and base camp was buzzing with activities. It takes a lot of people to produce a photo shoot, make-up artist, hair stylist, wardrobe stylist and some of those positions have assistants. There is the photo crew with the photographer, at least two assistants, digital tech who takes the cards and downloads the images to a Mac, usually a MacBook Pro with at least three backup drives. You have a prop stylist who dresses up the set, usually there are several assistance for this position. You have the production staff, a producer, sometimes a production coordinator and a few production assistance. There is the motor home driver and on larger sets multiple motor homes and drivers. There is the agency and the client. Of course there are the models. A typical crew size can be as little as ten and as many as fifty people. It takes sometimes a couple of hours to get the models ready and prep the set.
The reason clients like to film at the North Shore is because there are so many different places to photograph. You got the bait shop, the abandon roads, the community center, the Salton Sea, the beach, the harbor and other locations. It is hard to duplicate the North Shore, it is unique and yet you are not far from Indio, about thirty minutes north west. You are about fifty minutes from Palm Springs from Palm Springs. PS has some of the best four stars hotels like the Ace Hotle 760.325.9900, The Saguaro Palm Springs 760.323.1711. Both hotels offer excellent service and awesome rooms for a good price, especially in the off season.
If you are interested in this location (North Shore) call Dan Taylor at 951.232.1271 he is the film commissioner for the Salton Sea (Riverside County). Film Permits are relatively easy to obtain. If you need motor homes or portable restrooms or any questions about this location or other locations call me (Michael Green) at 818 317 7099.
