Breathtaking Photos of the SF Bay Salt Ponds

If you’ve ever flown over the southern end of the San Francisco Bay you’ve witnessed firsthand the surreal scene of the salt ponds--a crazy patchwork of colors as “fields” of water evaporate, leaving behind sea salt that’s harvested for commercial purposes.

The former chair of the University of California, Berkeley’s Department of Architecture, Cris Benton, views them as works of art. He’s been photographing them for the past decade, gathering his best shots in a new book, Saltscapes: The Kite Aerial Photography of Cris Benton (Heyday, 2013).

The Sierra Club has created a slideshow of the amazing kaleidoscope.