In 2009 I began crafting a series of images in and around The Great Salt Lake in Utah. After dozens of shoots and countless images later the collection called 'Mysteries Of The Big Salty Lake' found its natural ending with Rainey and Jed providing the wild and unfettered beauty that I'd long been hoping for. Mysteries Of The Big Salty Lake is now complete.

We traveled to the north end of the lake to Rozel Point, a stone's throw from Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty. It's a place of harsh magic where oil oozes from the earth, the water has 27% salinity and the wooden remnants of long ago oil rigs still haunt the landscape. It's crazy dry up there and the wind can whip fiercely while storms move in quickly across the lake from the desert. V shaped formations of brown pelicans fly effortlessly overhead from their home on Gunnison Island while the occasional snake slithers underfoot. For the past 12 years it's been my favorite place on the lake to shoot. Journeying there with my models is a ritual I've loved and will certainly miss. It feels good to have said goodbye with Rainey and Jed providing so much magic to the collection.
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There's a lot to share about this shoot and I'll do that in the next few weeks. The selection and editing of images is a process that takes a lot of time when models like Rainey and Jed have delivered one astonishing moment after another.

All of the images on this page, on this post and on this blog are Copyrighted by Tom Clark and may not be used in any form, digital or otherwise, without specific written permission.
Sundays in Laguna
For seven years I lived and worked in a quiet little neighborhood in the Backbay area of Newport Beach called Santa Ana Heights. Though I call the area a quiet little neighborhood it lies directly under the flight path of the Orange County Airport. Not a problem for me though since every time a jet took off I imagined myself in it and on my way to Italy, my childhood home. It was a beautiful way to turn the noise of a jet engine into a promising fantasy that more than a few times became my reality. Perhaps one of the best parts of living in Santa Ana Heights was the fact that it took me 13 minutes to get to Laguna Beach, the legendary beach town that to this day remains one of my favorite places on earth. I have loved Laguna since I first discovered it in early 1983 and Jed and I are currently in the planning phase of making it our permanent home.
All of that is to introduce you to a series of letters that I wrote to friends about my adventures in Laguna on Sunday mornings. I never intended it to be a thing but on its own it became one. I created the domain SundaysInLaguna.com and began to gather the essays and stories into one place. As we contemplate our new life there I’m certain that these essays will likely begin again with an updated perspective on a Southern California beach town that has seen a fascinating and unstoppable evolution over the past many decades. In that light I would like to begin where my original essays left off and share with you my thoughts on what it means to be a part of that evolution. This was written on Super Bowl Sunday 2016
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