A mixture of fly-bys and other types of video that focuses on (mostly) desert landscapes typically scarred by (or at least deeply affected by) human presence of some sort.
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Unnatural Landscapes 6: Desert Sunrise (Trona Road)
Go to video page…: Unnatural Landscapes 6: Desert Sunrise (Trona Road)Unnatural Landscapes 6: Desert Sunrise (Trona Road) — a video by Hamish Reid. A very smoky sunrise captured from above off the Trona Road on my way from Barstow to Trona way back in 2020. It took me years to get around to editing this footage up into a finished clip, but I’ve wanted to get the combination of soft early morning light (with the smoke from the bush fires in another part of the state making itself felt even here) and a badly scarred desert landscape criss-crossed by ATV and other tracks. As usual, Garry Manley’s soundtrack really helps make this clip work.
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Unnatural Landscapes 5: Salt Flats
Go to video page…: Unnatural Landscapes 5: Salt FlatsUnnatural Landscapes 5: Salt Flats — a video by Hamish Reid Built from footage I took on a trip to the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah early Spring, 2024, and continuing a fascination I have with vehicle tracks carved into desert landscapes. In this case those tracks are hard to miss (I wanted to call this video NASCAR Lines, but I thought no one would get it), but I very nearly did miss them due to the terrible weather while I was in the area (it snowed on me at least once a day, and rained about half the time, and the wind was fierce). I need to go back out there and do it properly again. This is also so far the only Unnatural Landscapes to use a soundtrack that isn’t by Garry Manley — instead, it’s an old fave of mine, John Adams’s China Gates (performed by Nicolas Hodges), which I’ve wanted to use for something like this for a long time. And no, the clip’s not done in monochrome (as is obvious towards the end); the Flats are just like that when the skies are unbrokenly grey and rainy…
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Unnatural Landscapes 4: Lakebed
Go to video page…: Unnatural Landscapes 4: LakebedUnnatural Landscapes 4: Lakebed — a video by Hamish Reid. Another Unnatural Landscape, another Owens Valley fly-by… definitely a more languorous take on the subject than most of my jeremiads about the LADWP, but still intended to hit home (albeit softly). As with most Unnatural Landscapes, the soundtrack’s by Garry Manley (Tactics, Popular Mechanics, Saturday Maybe).
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Unnatural Landscapes 3: Oilfield
Go to video page…: Unnatural Landscapes 3: OilfieldUnnatural Landscapes 3: Oilfield — a video by Hamish Reid. Number three in the Unnatural Landscapes series, and probably my favourite: an unusually fixed (but hypnotic) view of the Kern River oilfields from the bluffs overlooking the Kern River in Bakersfield from footage taken in 2024. I’ve struggled to get a video version of this sight (and site) for decades (I have some good still photography shots of it, though); I think I finally got it close to what I want with this one. A large part of why I think the clip works is the soundtrack by my friend Garry Manley (again!) in Sydney, which seems to echo in sound the shimmering visuals — this video wouldn’t work nearly as well without that soundtrack.
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Unnatural Landscapes 2: Quarry
Go to video page…: Unnatural Landscapes 2: QuarryUnnatural Landscapes 2: Quarry — a video by Hamish Reid. Number two in the Unnatural Landscapes series, a short overhead view of a quarry or open cut mine in a volcanic landscape done in California during 2025. As with most of the other videos in the series, the soundtrack’s by my friend Garry Manley (Tactics, Popular Mechanics, Saturday Maybe) in Sydney.
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Unnatural Landscapes 1: Lake
Go to video page…: Unnatural Landscapes 1: LakeUnnatural Landscapes 1: Lake — a video by Hamish Reid. The first in a new series, Unnatural Landscapes, which focuses on California and Nevada landscapes typically scarred by (or at least deeply affected by) human work. In this case, it’s my old favourite, Owens Lake (with the LADWP playing its usual role of walk-on villain) and some unusually difficult-to-decode artificial landforms. The wonderful soundtrack is a collaboration with Garry Manley (Tactics, Popular Mechanics, Saturday Maybe), an old friend of mine in Australia, who’s basically responsible for all the music in this and most of the rest of the current series. Yes, some of this footage has appeared before, but I wanted to reuse it in a different sort of (dreamier) setting — and with a very different soundtrack (thanks Garry!) — so here it is.