Kate Bradshaw

The Ravenswood salt ponds next to Meta’s Menlo Park headquarters. Courtesy Barbara Boissevain.

The photographer’s striking aerial and ground-level images are part of the forthcoming book ‘Salt of the Earth’.

By Kate Bradshaw

Published March 30, 2023 in The Six Fifty.

Environmental photographer Barbara Boissevain was shooting photographs from a helicopter over the Bay when she first saw the subject that she would choose to record over the next 12 years and compile a photography book about. 

While taking airborne photographs of the Lehigh Quarry and Cement Factory back in 2010, she looked over and saw the Peninsula’s salt ponds, the striking and vivid colors and shapes of a landscape shaped by human interference.

“They’re just hard to miss,” she says. “Depending on the time of year that you go up, sometimes (the colors are) orange and red and really vibrant. And then other times, they’re more subdued.”

She finished her shoot of the cement factory and decided to come back to the salt ponds. As she returned, she learned more about the environmental efforts that were underway to restore the wetlands surrounding the Peninsula. 

Full story here.