Ballona Creek Footbridge

I just recently moved to Culver City and was immediately drawn to the Ballona Creek, a nine mile waterway which was once a meandering creek that could quickly turn into a torrential river after severe rains. It was paved over, á la the LA River, by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1935 to prevent flooding and damage to surrounding homes. Needless to say, much of it’s quaintness would seem to be lost at first glance, but after spending some time along it’s banks and its 7 mile bike path, I started to feel the allure.

Shopping cart in Ballona Creek

On a clear night last week I went down to a particularly photogenic footbridge that crosses the creek just west of Overland. I had made up my mind to make the creek an ongoing project and the footbridge had caught my eye as a nice subject to photograph. I took a few initial shots from the upper banks, focusing on an abandoned shopping cart that had been dumped into the river. It was not the first cart I had seen in the creek and I guarantee not the last. I think the only reason people dump them in the creek is to watch them roll down the slides of the creek banks and splash into the water.

Ballona Creek footbridge at dusk

I slowly descended down the paved slope to the water’s edge for a final shot of the bridge at dusk, and I set up my camera inches away from the water, about a foot off the ground. I often get my best dusk shots when it looks as if the shoot should be over, when the sky is dark with only a hint of blue in it. The digital capture (we used to call it film) records it brighter than our eyes do and it can balance out quite well with the darkness of a foreground or whatever else is in the frame.

I clicked away some 30 second to one minute exposures and sat cross-legged by the water as it gurgled by. I was totally unprepared for the calmness of the setting and how nice it was to sit by an urban stream. What a great place to watch the sunset. I could only imagine how it might look if someday the pavement is removed and the natural state of the creek returns. More on the Ballona Creek in a few weeks.