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Originally uploaded by jonnyeye.
I spent Sunday at the Burning Man Decompression festival here in San Francisco which was absolutely brilliant.
Some shoddy photos can be found in the left hand column or on my Flickr site.
Cameras were banned which seemed slightly ridiculous. This might have been to protect the modesty of the dudes who decided to come naked, or the Japanese rope bondage artistes...or even to safegaurd the blueprints for all the incredible, enormous dancing robots that made up the numbers.....but I reckon it's really just so that the organisers can flog 'official snaps'....all very odd given the ethos of the Burning Man community.
For those that aren't familiar with the loony festival in the desert, you can do your Burning Man research here.
Anyway, never mind - I sneaked in my trusty Pentax Optio S5i and shot from the hip. I was too busy having fun to take many good shots though.
Best of all was the installation you see above. It's difficult to describe, but that's a 15 foot high ceramic head onto which the faces of anyone-who-wanted-a-go was projected....the effect was a huge human head floating in the dark reading poetry/singing songs/gurning. Think Bohemian Rhapsody but loads, loads better. If I was a theatre or gig producer, I'd be ripping off this idea immediately...
Having never been to Burning Man, I now can't wait. I've heard naysayers bemoaning its recent success/commercialisation (EVERYTHING YOU LIKE I LIKED TEN YEARS AGO!)...but they're probably the ones who told me that Ibiza and Glastonbury 'just aren't worth it anymore' before I had two of the best weekends of my life in those places. So I'll be buying tickets to Burning Man in the New Year - who's in?!
The only downside of this day out was that, amidst all the fabulously dressed funsters, I'd (unwittingly) chosen to wear jeans and brown knitwear. Next time, I plan to be a participant rather than an observer, even if I was seeing in 3D
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