The Temple of Transition’s burn was quick and hot: by my clock it was only about 20 minutes between the structure getting lit and the rangers dropping the perimeter. It’s brevity did not detract from it’s beauty by any means as I’m sure you will agree. Much respect to the Temple crew.
Nothing to say here except happy new year, folks!
(More pics on my flickr strream here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelholden )
“Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and adventures are the shadow truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes and forgotten.”
– Neil Gaiman
We love to hate the dust. It gets into everything, it sticks to anything. What it touches is marked for the remainder of it’s significantly shortened lifespan. I believe we ingest a lot more of it than we imagine. Fighting it — believe me, I’ve tried — is useless.
But I find that when I quit fighting and embrace the dust, and I mean truly become one with it and of it and in it, it becomes almost impossible to become actually dirty. And my camera gets a magical Shield of Immunity against playa, and so I go out and shoot what the dust reveals.
Hawaii CORE project
Dusty Couple
This morning I stumbled out of my trailer and was treated to a true delight: The Balloonatics, AKA the Burning Man Balloon Operation (Bi.M.B.O) had rolled into DisOrient and were filling up a couple dozen enormous brightly colored weather balloons with helium.
That’s a lot of helium….and I thought to myself, well, this is clearly worth an extended gander. They were planning on giving people rides as soon as they had enough of them filled up. As it turns out, this is a lot harder to do that one might thinks: The balloons are huge, and if the lines get tangled they become unmanageable. But the Balloonatics make short work of it and before long they have 20 balloons filled up and took them out to their staging area to get them ready to fly.
12:01 AM Monday, August 29th 2011: must be time to burn.
The calendar says so.
Burning Man is in full swing. There are hundreds…no, clearly thousands of auto headlamps visible on Gate Road, something that Danger Ranger once referred to as the “String of Pearls”. Swarms of clean people are pouring out of the radial streets onto the iinner playa…and I just saw one guy belly flop with joy into the dust. And the art. The art is up, and more is coming. I can’t see it all. I can’t shoot it all. I can barely even decide which of the 3000 images I’ve captured in the last few days to display here.
So, without further ado, here’s a small sample of what Burning Man 2011 has in store for you.
“Orgasm” by Brian Tedrick
