THURSDAY: For all the joy and wonder that is Burning Man, there is another side. It’s the side that eats your plans. The side that breaks your equipment, injures you, swallows whole the things you need, and laughs in your face. It is extremely challenging to create a project of any kind here, as many Playa artists will attest to. Some thrive on the challenge, and I admire them. Some of us fall apart. This place has a way of amplifying anything you are feeling and dealing with, and well, it’s been a rough couple days for me and the Portrait Project. After many struggles with getting the booth in place and fighting the lighting, it now looks like the camera I brought to use is not going to work. It does take nice pictures (you can see two of them on the right), but they are not going to work to create paintings from. None of the photos taken at the booth yesterday is going to work. It’s something I couldn’t have known before taking them here. Thankfully there is a professional photographer here camping with us that has offered to work with me on Friday (she has a great camera), so it’s not a total loss. However there is still today’s shoot to content with. I will go to Media Mecca (that’s the central meeting place for photographers and video crews here at the event) and hopefully find some willing soul to help tonight. Sigh. Wish me luck my friends. This is one challenge I must overcome.
UPDATE: Just call it the magic of Burning Man…found a very nice photographer to help me out tonight with the shoot. It’s all going to work out…feeling better, having fun. Off to the shoot!
FRIDAY:
Shoot was much better yesterday. Adam from Connecticut, the wonderful photographer I found to help with the shoot, was amazing. What a sweetheart. Some of the connections you make out here on the Playa are just kismet. I hope we’ll be able to stay in touch for a long time to come. I’ll be posting all of his contact info on the website when we get back to Denver. Today is the third and final photo booth day, and Anthea, one of my awesome campmates (and just a gorgeous girl) will be helping with the shoot. She’s a photographer from LA, my birthplace. The weather has been fantastic, best weather I’ve ever experienced here. About 88-90 during the day and 56-60 at night. The wind has been minimal so no big dust storms. Just really great. Been trying to get some video footage and photos out and about, will get more tonight. Seems like we’re just settling into life here, and it’s hard to think we’ll be leaving in just 2 days. We’ve seen so many wonders and met so many great people. I still find it amazing that people come here from all over the world. We’ve met people from Australia, Bermuda, Israel, France, Switzerland & Scotland just to name a few. We’ve met up with old friends and had a couple fun celebrity sightings. (though everyone is a celebrity here) Got to see Beats Antik perform last night which was amazing, and just missed Crystal Method, but they are doing another set again tonight. Looking forward to getting out and playing later after the shoot. We’re planning to go “Deep Playa” and see more of the art installations out there. Tomorrow night is the big night, when they burn the man…
