Found my shitty old canon and it had some photos on it!

Labels: festival, flickr

I got back to the UK the other day, and after a long period of sleepless flying and jet lag I'm catching up on my neglected tasks. One of which is this blog and one of the major reasons of neglect is writers block.
I've been trying to write about Burning Man for over a week now with little success, it seems that the whole event is beyond my ability to describe, I'm a Photographer not a Writer.

That being said I only took out my camera 4 times during the event and snapped off around 200 pictures which is pretty damn low for me considering I usually take more than that in one day and I took enough storage and battery life to choke a donkey. I think Paolo said it best with "You can either capture it or be in it, you can't do both." So there you go, I was in it, I was in it hard.
Even Jay Michaelson's description of:

"It's a temporary city of 50,000 people, devoted to radical self-expression. So you'll find anything you'd find in a regular city -- art museums, dance clubs, yoga studios -- only in the middle of the desert, with no money, and with more creativity than you've ever seen."

seems to miss out a bit, so of the few photos I did take, I will let them tell a bit of the story.
Abby and I made the trip together, and as I had lost the truck we took a bus to Seattle and got a ride down with some people that were found on the internet, Whitney and Tahir. The drive down was long, I will stick to talking about BM, America is still a crazy story thou. We arrived at around 12am on Saturday, and were gifted early passes, set up the tent in the dark not knowing where we were and had our last taste of normality.
We awoke to the stunning vista which is Black Rock City, in the middle stages of development. We had hooked up a camping with "Red Lightning", a group mainly from the bay area consisting of assorted new age/gender alchemist/spirit healer/fire and lightning performer/spiritualist types who have come together to build one great camp. There were a lot of tipi's, 2 healing domes, a Sun and Moon Lodge, the lightning temple and the Entelechy (said in-tel-le-key) where various events, activities, workshops and performances were held. As we were virgins and had also arrived early we were at a bit of a loose end and tried to help were we could without getting under everyone's feet.
I helped a bit in the Entelechy helping Jo-Free and John with the final stages of setup, it was hard to feel like part of the group and for the first few days there was a lot of stress and sort tempers which we were not expecting, but things began to change as the final pieces began to slot into place and fresh people arrived with fresh energy.
There were massage tables being set up so I took the opportunity to practice some therapy on a couple of the super stressed "leaders", one of which (Evonne) later introduced me to people as an "Amazing Healer" which is possibly the nicest thing anyone has said about me, and it really made me feel welcome at camp.

Friends began to arrive and exploration took on greater distances, made easier by the bike given to me by the Campo Allegro crew for helping with their setup, and we hooked up with the Scotians and their crew at Storybooks and Alleyways, meeting more great people in the process. Greg and Natalie et al arrived for the Solar Sonic contingent, and our campsite and crew were finalised, the party could begin.

The Gypsum/salt/sand/dust storms were frequent early on, temperatures were hitting 35-38 (I think), David's poor cooling system could not cope. During these times I hid from the sun and wind as much as possible (not very much) and in the late afternoon headed out into the throng. The gift economy was a little tough to get used to, and as a person who rarely says no to anything I ended up getting caffeinated, spanked, ass branded and drunk on the way to Storybooks, all within about 10 minutes. Saying no to people became the hardest thing, I found myself wanting for nothing, I even got given some clothes!

Days beautifully swept into nights, the desert itself is a beautiful place in the twilight, I don't think I have seen a sunset or sunrise with a greater spectrum of colour, sadly I only captured one sunset and no sunrises, but the moonrise during sunset (right) was rather beautiful.

Night brings a change to the city, from the time that the lamp lighters finish hanging the lanterns until the rainbow dawn, art cars, bikes, art bikes and people navigate the playa, moving between displays, music, parties, art installations and home, it was like being in a movie all the time. Saturday night was the climax of the entire thing with the burning of the man (sorry no pics) which was so incredible I can't describe it. Really.

The temple burn on Sunday was a more somber affair, and the week came to an end. Abby and I parted ways, I headed up to Seattle via a hot springs in Oregon with some new friends and hung in Seattle for a couple of days exploring before tripping back to Vancouver for the weekend and the flight back to the UK.

Photos, do your thing . . .


More photos on Flickr

Labels: festival

Back from the burn, in Seattle til further notice

Labels: festival, flickr

In Sacramento, Playa today!

Labels: festival, flickr

So last week I decided in a moment of 'clarity' that I would buy a vehicle to gt myself to Shambhala, then use for the duration of my holiday, then sell it at 60% of the purchase price before I left. I found a vehicle on craigslist (of course) took it for a drive, conducted an amateur mechanical inspection and everything seemed hunky dory. I replaced the headlights and a tail indicator bulb, topped up her fluids and gave her a good clean.

On Thursday we loaded her up with gear and were on the road to Shambhala by 7pm. By about 8:30pm we reached Hope, and a small ticking noise that had started about 40 mins into the trip had been gradually getting louder. We stopped at Hope for dinner and I had a quick check over things, oil was a little low but above the line, but the coolant in the reservoir had taken on a slight brown tinge. I didn't think too much of it at the time and decided to change the coolant when we got back to Vancouver.

We kept rocking east and as "The war of the worlds" was playing and everyone drifted off to sleep while I settled in for the drive. The ticking noise was very random, but generally when the engine was creating a lot of torque the noise got a little louder, I was worried but felt there was nothing I could do.

Osoyoos

By the time we reached Osooyoos, the noise had been coming and going, we stopped for gas, started up the hill and she started making a foul noise so we stopped to take pictures of the view and we noticed that we had a major leaking problem. I checked the oil and she was almost dry. Shit. Checked under the engine and sure enough there was oil leaking from somewhere, so we turned around and went back down to Osooyoos and rolled to the gas station where we stocked up on oil.

Problem solved! Temp normal, noise gone, leak still there but minimal, worry about it later. Bought 2 extra litres of oil and continued east into the night.

We arrived at Salmo around 5:30am Friday, gates opened at 8am, and as the others slept, I wandered around wired on coffee til it was time to cue up. We got through in pretty good time, were setting up by 11am at the Arctic Embassy with Eugene, Ryan and assorted associates.

Nude swimming and some granola prepared me for the Rock Pit, but I only lasted a while before crashing as soon as the sun went down. Saturday and Sunday were amazing, the music was the best I have seen there so far, Eprom was so intense, on Saturday met up with Siobhan, Isaac and Will at around 2am and danced in The Village until about 6am. It's hard to explain just how incredible the night was, people who know me will know that I'm very against pseudo science/ astrology/ telekinetic energy etc, but everything in the world seemed to be in alignment, it was great to be able to share it with my friends and feel it wash over us together.


















Annnnyway, the sun kept me awake for most of the day but I got about 3 hours of sleep around lunch before another hard days night of dancing til the wee smalls. I went on a couple of photography missions, but had a financial problem with my camera costume so just went out and took shots. Met some new cool people, soaked up a lot of inspiration and had a very reflective time at the campsite.

Monday morning we packed up the gear, I went and got the truck and we loaded her up and spent 4 hours waiting in line to get out. We got about halfway up the long dusty road when the temp gauge started shooting up for the first time, so I checked her levels, oil was lower but still safe, but the radiator had sprung a leak (not sure when/where) and was near dry. Used all our water plus many other passers by, eventually made it to Salmo for more water with 4 cool down stops, but the damage was done she was not looking good. The leaks became worse and worse, we were getting about 1 Km per litre of water and the oil slowly dropping too.

I was hoping to make it back to Vancouver, but with each hill came even greater moans of agony from the truck and by the time we got to Grand Forks she was giving up on a very regular basis. Called the CAA and they offered little help at 9pm, so we rolled (literally) back into Grand Forks and settled down for the night in a ghetto camp where we slept under the stars.

About 3 am the sprinklers turned on and we all got a bit wet, but managed to get some more sleep before getting to the auto repair shop at 8am. Guy came out and gave me the news I was expecting, blown head gasket and broken coolant pump, cost of repair, about the same as the cost of the vehicle. Shit. I got $50 for parts, and our mechanic (who also doubled as a preacher) sat down and gave us the most horribly constructed fundamentalist christian arguments against evolution ever.
For example;

"Those scientists say that evolution makes us better, but I see old people get sick and die all the time they don't get better, what do the scientist say about that? I'm taking pills for my knee but I'm not getting better. Evolution MUST be wrong!"

It was scary because that was his strongest argument, Issac dealt with him well, I tried very hard to keep quiet and focus on getting us home.



$95CAN each later we were on a 10hr bus ride minus a bunch of our gear we had to leave behind, but we got in to be greeted by Paolo at the station.

Long Trip.

Labels: festival, vancouver

Back from Shambhala less one truck. Cracked head gasket + radiator pump fail = dead truck. Shit.

Labels: festival, flickr

Goodbye London, hello Vancouver!

Labels: festival, flickr, London

Went and saw the Lion King last night, was a great show, but lacked in a few areas, young Simba was pretty terrible as were a couple of the other cast members and some of the new songs failed to compete with the originals but definitely worth seeing. It's no Les Miserables, Amazing sets and costumes thou. .

Labels: festival, flickr, London

I have been pretty busy recently with work, it feels like I haven't even picked up my camera, but I took this photo the other day on the Richmond bridge as the sun was setting, hand held HDR without manual bracketing (thou I used a bit of concrete for support) on the D40, I'm pretty happy that it came out let alone looks rather cool if I do say so myself :)

The website (TTMC) is in the stage where it takes me 2 hours reading PHP help documents to learn how to fix one little thing, so the progress is slow. Still no IE support yet, I have a friend who may be helping me out on that one cause being PC less doesn't help.

I'm off to Canada in less than 2 weeks now, the break from work alone will be amazing let alone the wonders that await. Shambles is shaping up to be a interesting photo mission, I have an idea for a series/costume that if it works will be fantastic. . . if it works.

I also went out and saw Cat last weekend at the "Vesbar" in Shepherds Bush, it was a little piece of every meat market from NZ, all rolled into one. I think you had to show your NZ passport to get in (Jandals, NZ outline tee, greenstone etc) and there was a guy playing "loyal" as I walked in. It was fucked. Nice to see Cat thou.

Lion King next week, and maybe a little Southbank Centre to get some culture before I'm outta here, but I'm pretty much just priming up for the trip. I have a new (second hand) lens arriving tomorrow so there will probably be a few more shots while we are on honeymoon.

Peace.

Labels: festival, flickr, London