Burning Man 2009

A short synopis of this year’s burn.

Latest from the aquarium

Yashia Goby and his Pistol Shrimp roommate from mullingitover on Vimeo.

So I went camping in the desert a couple weeks ago

This was my fourth year at Burning Man, my senior year if you will. I went through the usual cycle of being highly motivated to prepare properly, and then completely screwing up and forgetting something I really wanted. This year, I would forget to bring my SLR’s battery charger and one of the batteries. I realized I’d forgotten it after I was about three hundred miles from home. The idea that someone in my camp would have a charger was comforting on the rest of the drive. It turned to sadness when nobody had a charger.

Nonetheless it was Burning Man, and I still had a pulse so it was impossible to have a bad time. I camped with Black Rock Yearbook, who are wonderful people. The handful of shots that I did get turned out to be something worth looking at. Can’t wait to go back next year, where this time I’ll be prepared.

The best of the bunch was a serendipitous shot of Neverwas Haul at sunset.

The Man was also a standout, this was one of my first shots upon arrival. The sun was making giant pink light beams over the mountains in the background as it was just about to rise.

Before I knew it, it was Saturday night and the man was getting asploded.

Holding Flame from mullingitover on Vimeo.

I walked around getting video snapshots and ran into Holding Flame. Incredible.

Can’t do anything right

Shamelessly plundered from the internet. This has been floating around in the current health care debate, and I wanted to save it:

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the U.S. Department of Energy.

I then took a shower in the clean water provided by a municipal water utility.

After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC-regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like, using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

I watched this while eating my breakfast of U.S. Department of Agriculture-inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time, as regulated by the U.S. Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration-approved automobile and set out to work on the roads build by the local, state, and federal Departments of Transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank.

On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the U.S. Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school.

After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and Fire Marshal’s inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department, and which has not been bombed to smithereens thanks to the various branches of the United States Armed Forces.

And then I log on to the internet — which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration — and post on Freerepublic.com and Fox News forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can’t do anything right.

moar hdr

Burbank Water and Power

I’ve been on an HDR spree lately, doing tons of landscape pictures that would be really difficult to expose properly without HDR. Normally shooting directly into the sun is utter madness, but HDR lets you grab the details at each exposure bracket. Read the rest of this entry »

istockphoto turned me down

The wost thing for a me as a photographer is seeing awesome things when I don’t have a camera or I can’t shoot pictures. It’s usually worst when I’m driving.

I’ve been taking pictures

I’ve been playing around with Photomatix. While it’s very easy to make a good picture look worse using HDR tonemapping, it’s also possible to make three bad pictures look amazing. The tone mapping makes it possible to do smash the rules and do ridiculous things like shooting directly into the sun. The software also does a great job with realigning photos when you shoot sans tripod, which is the only way I shoot.

So I’ve been hitting a bunch of Los Angeles landmarks to take pictures. I’m very happy with how they turned out.

Santa Monica Pier

Santa Monica Pier

Portal of the Folded Wings, Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery

Downtown Los Angeles

Sepulveda Dam

Windows 7

I’m looking forward to its release.

Serious Midnight Ridazz documentary is serious

L.A. Bike Scene from studiodrome on Vimeo.

This awesome video does a much better job of capturing the scene than my clumsy thrown-together home movies.

What a strange development

I’ve made an interesting discovery. Apparently MTV, the crappy reality show channel, dabbled with music videos in the past. Now they’ve gone and made themselves a Hulu-like web site of their own, on the internets, to get back to their less-awful roots. Kudos and golf claps for you, MTV! You’re almost relevant now.

Check out the site.