Year 11, and another solo voyage from London to the desert. And the tardiest I’ve ever been in posting my burn shots. Yes, it’s February 2010, and I’ve finally got them sorted and online.
Five words explain this huge delay: Mastering Canon EOS Flash Photography. This massive 420 page epic of a book (much more interesting than its title suggests!) is shipping as of early April in the US and Canada, and will be available soon elsewhere. And naturally I hope everybody rushes out and buys a copy straight away! If you’ve ever wanted to learn more about flash photography, even if you’re not a Canon user, this is for you. A handful of burneriffic shots are in there to boot.
Cheapskates (and I mean that lovingly) can also enter my free prize draw for a copy of the book.
Anyway. Enough advertising. The theme on the playa this year was Evolution, and I was hoping for some interesting stuff to come out of that. Sadly, there were no crazy creatures from the Burgess Shale or anything. In fact, my favourite pieces this year - the elegance and staggering detail of the Gothic Raygun Rocketship and the beautiful simplicity of Holding Flame - really weren’t particularly related to the theme. Still, it did set the stage for a more thoughtful and introspective year.
One big personal accomplishment was achieving a long-term dream of mine: to photograph Black Rock City from the sky at night. Thanks to the Burning Sky skydive camp I was able to get some shots from a jump plane, night of the temple burn. Quite a technical challenge to shoot out a freezingly cold and windy open plane door in the middle of the night, but I think the results are kind of interesting.
Sadly I lost three non backed-up memory cards on the flight back. I got bumped off the return trip and was pretty exhausted by the time I got onto my flight, and ended up losing a whole memory wallet. So quite a few shots from this year are gone forever. Oh well.
Thanks to CameraGirl, Ken Jobsky, George Woods, Crimson Rose, David Shulman, Sean Orlando, Doug Jones, Adam Chilson, Padawan, Rosie Neuharth, and all my camp neighbours. And of course Jennifer for putting up with these mad cross-Atlantic jaunts.
Note that the thumbnails below take you to the first shot in each group, not necessarily to the image depicted. I also have some shots at the bottom from other events, including Irish Decompression. I don’t have any shots of London Decompression, as I went sans camera. It felt liberating and naked. I haven’t been to a burner event in a decade probably without a camera...
