As part of my professional work outside of photography I am proud to serve as the executive director of the American Shore and Beach Preservation Association (ASBPA). ASBPA held its fall technical conference in Long Beach, CA this past week and, of course, I brought along my camera. I was able to steal away from the conference a bit to do some shooting in Long Beach and I will be posting some images from the trip over the next few (or more) days. To set the stage, here are two photos I took yesterday as we were leaving Long Beach in the plane heading back to Delaware. They show the Port of Long Beach, which I learned quite a bit about at our conference, and the heavily developed surrounding area. The Port is at the entrance of the Los Angeles River where it enters San Pedro Bay and the Pacific Ocean. The Port is vital infrastructure to the supply chain for the nation for goods coming in from across the Pacific. The Port lifts the large containers and place them on the 18 wheeler trucks we see on the highway. The Port of Long Beach offloads over 4 million of these 40 foot containers every year accounting for $200 billion worth of cargo that heads out to the rest of the nation. This cargo comes off of 2,000 vessels annually. Pretty impressive stuff. Our conference hotel was just off the very wide section of beach that can be seen near the top of the second photograph.
