I am going to acknowledge another less successful attempt in my photography.  At Burning Man this year, the most impressive art piece was certainly the “Temple of Transition.”  In years past, the Temple was this really spooky place you visited, left an offering, and got the hell outta there.  Even though previous temples had been incredibly beautiful, they were certainly not the hub of action that this year’s temple turned out to be.

My first close view of the temple happened from an art car manned by the Piñata’s Revenge Camp.  We cruised around the magnificent structure at sunset as the earth harp was being played for the masses gathered below.  The great sky changed color every few minutes from pinks to purples and finally blues.  It was really something, something sacred and special, and something I wanted to come back and photograph.  I kept putting off shoots for various reasons, eventually choosing the night of The Man burn.

I arrived early and sat around for a while as the sun dropped behind the horizon and it became dark enough to do long exposures.  The problem with sunsets and sunrises is that they happen so quickly and the light changes so fast that you are constantly readjusting your camera settings to keep the same basic exposure.  It is a real pain, and if you are me, you normally go out without a specific game plan, and things don’t always go so well.   I ended up standing with the backlit temple behind me, which was beautiful but left me a dark blackness in which to work.   Without a front light source I was too dark to see, so I tried to light myself with two very bright flashlights and that was pretty much a failure.  The composition is pretty awful as well, as I am standing central and static in front of the temple and not engaging with my surroundings, sort of an alien tourist at the temple image.

I was trying to achieve this “many armed goddess” thing by dragging the light over my arms in different places; it kind of worked, and might be great in the future but not here.  By the time I started to explore, the light was gone and we were going to be late for The Man burn.  We abandoned the shoot, and I came away from the burn without any new images.  Disappointing in retrospect, but sometimes that is just the way of things. These are the results: nothing special, but as this blog is not only about success but the learning process I feel the need to post what I captured.  (No worries though, the next shoot kicks ass!)  Click on the images for a larger view.