Burning Man: the facts, the fiction, the photography.

I get asked this a lot and it’s always difficult to answer. Most people think it’s sex, drugs and rock and roll and it is partially that, but it’s also the biggest art, music, creative, religion, science, ecological and photo festival you’ve ever seen. The next question is, how can you stand the heat and the dust? Well it’s no hotter than southern California, and the days with blowing white gypsum, are by far the most interesting and beautiful days for photography.

The biggest challenge, of course, is protecting your camera from the dust. So I wrapped my camera body and lens tightly except for the glass in Saran wrap, which actually worked pretty well. The light meter functioned fine through the clear wrap and the camera focus turned unrestricted. One thing you do not want to do is to change lenses on the Playa. Even on a still day or your sensor will be a mess if you expose it. As cautious as I was, my camera still has a white patina that is impossible to get rid of. So now I bring my beater camera and old Nikon D200, it works just fine for people photos in the dust, however on clear days I may still pull out the 5D… wrapped!

Black Rock City is also the mother of invention. As starkly beautiful as it can be, the bright blue skies can sometime use a little help. So I sat down with my friend and LayerCake partner Alan Mayer and we figured out a way to extract clouds from beautiful skies, in order to drag and drop them into ourboring ones. Follow me next week on Twitter from Burning Man, profile @Harry.Layercake. Let’s see what the white dust of the Playa brings this year. Reach me at Harry@LayerCakeElements.com

Mad Max Mohawk, LayerCake Drag & Drop Clouds

Headless Wonders, LayerCake Drag & Drop Clouds

Black Rock Taxi, LayerCake Drag & Drop Clouds