Top 10 California Parks #1: Anza-Borrego State Park

Sunrise light on Fonts Point

I've been exploring California for many years, and one of my favorite parks is Anza-Borrego State Park.  The largest state park in California, Anza-Borrego encompasses an impressive 600,000 acres (938 square miles). For photography, subjects include wildflowers, narrow, winding slot canyons, eroded badlands, cracked earth on a dry lake bed, desert plants including cacti and ocotillo, over 100 large, rusty metal sculptures, and more.

The most comfortable time to visit the park is in the fall, winter and spring months, avoiding the summer heat.  In late February through March, you may encounter a decent wildflower bloom.  

My favorite location in the park is probably Fonts Point, which offers nice views for both sunrise and sunset.  The only problem is that you have to drive for miles up the loose gravel of a dry wash to get there, so it's best reached in high clearance vehicles, even better if you have 4WD.

The rusty metal sculptures scattered around the desert surrounding the town of Borrego Springs often depict animals from the region's past.  They make popular subjects for night photography.  The adjacent community of Borrego Springs has been recognized by the  as a Dark Sky Community for its efforts to preserve visibility of the night sky.  The nights around the new moon dates in the summer are particularly good for Milky Way photography, and any clear night is good for star trails.

Not far to the east is the Salton Sea, and the 200 square miles of dunes at Imperial Sand Dunes can be productive for photographers to explore as well.

As I mentioned here on my blog recently, you can browse the latest photos from California's over 11,800 parks on the new Web site Caliparks.org.  

Later this summer, I’ll share hundreds of my favorite landscape photography locations in my new 320-page guidebook: Photographing California - Vol. 2: South - A Guide to the Natural landmarks of the Golden State.  Connect with me on social media sites for updates on the book's release, including a pre-release offer for author-signed copies.

If you use Flickr, you can also browse my Anza-Borrego album there for more photos from this park, to get an overview of the types of sights that you can see: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffreysullivan/sets/72157650176184687 

The 17 Palms oasis in Anza-Borrego

The Top 10 Parks in California

www.CaliParks.org

I've photographed dozens of parks in California over the past 30 years.  As digital cameras enabled sharing photos from my California travels, I've been putting them online for over 10 years, on sites like MyParkPhotos.com, operated by the +California State Parks Foundation.

More recently, the popularity of photo-sharing and social media sites has led to a new approach to enabling you to browse photos from California's parks.  A new Web site Caliparks.org automatically detects photos mapped to any one of over 11,800 parks in California, on +Instagram,  +Flickr and +Twitter,  and lets you browse them by name, or by type of outdoor activity that you're interested in.  When you navigate to their page for a particular park, you see the latest photos from those parks.

For examples, see this list of some of my favorite California parks that they've published, and when you click on the park, you'll see the latest Instagram photos taken there:

Jeff Sullivan's Top Ten Parks
http://www.caliparks.org/parks/story/jeff-sullivan-picks#6/35.92067835412144/-117.849665820702

My Top Ten California Parks on www.Caliparks.org

The site is developing quickly; it currently displays photos by most recent uploads.  It doesn't currently allow sorting and browsing by photographer or quality (such as Flickr's "interestingness").

If you'd like to see my photos from these parks, here are links to my Flickr photos from them:

1. Anza-Borrego State Park
2. Bodie State Historic Park
3. Death Valley National Park
4. Joshua Tree National Park
5. Kings Canyon National Park
6. Inyo National Forest
7. Mono Lake Tufa State Reserve
8. Sequoia National Park
9. Toiyabe National Forest
10. Yosemite National Park

To help you find the best photography locations in California’s parks, later this summer I’ll share hundreds of great landscape photography locations in my new 320-page guidebook: Photographing California - Vol. 2: South - A Guide to the Natural landmarks of the Golden State.

Connect with me on social media sites for updates on its release, or check my blog at JeffSullivanPhotography.com.