Burning Man 2015 – Black Rock City, USA
Taking time off for holidays is something we all enjoy and at Orange, Labor Day has always been a significant holiday since it’s a big weekend for weddings and really helps to kick off the fall season while also it’s the ending of Burning Man.
The three of us who started Orange have all been to Burning Man since the 1990s and although we had to take time off during the midst of the early years of Orange Photography, we still make it out from time to time. This year I went back for the fourth year in a row but for me the thing I most treasure is unplugging from the world for that week.
The conversations and experiences are much more interesting to me, and when the inevitable questions come up as to what was most memorable about ‘the Burn’, this year it was really just the interactions with the people I met out on the playa. The more random and serendipitous it was, the more intriguing it was.
The photo above is one such example. I had wanted to find a good time to photograph the Medusa Madness piece near Center Camp by Kevin Clark of Petaluma (I didn’t know it was he who created it at the time) and had been riding about with my cameras for only the second time all week. I had noticed a woman riding near me and wanted to grab a shot of her but the timing and angles were wrong so I instead rode up to the Medusa piece to check out the progress on it.
The woman I had seen earlier rolled up beside me as I was unzipping my Camelbak to get out my camera and said it was her friend who did the piece. We ended up chatting for a while about all kinds of things and then I asked to snap a shot of her with the installation. I really liked how it came out and the interaction we had before the photo is what makes it memorable for myself. There’s always so much amazing art and performances out there but the personal experiences and memories are what I treasure the most.
