The ill-fated Man moments before the initiation of his demise as the famous Burning Man.
The action starts… In a twist of luck, I went to college with the ranger in the foreground and so was granted access to the very front lines.
This explosion looks cool here, but it looks even more awesome on video.
Actually, the whole video is fun, but the massive explosion pictured above is around the three minute mark (and is worth watching).
The Man is fully engulfed in flames a short time later.
The Man begins to collapse – his final seconds…
Fin de Man. Burners race in to celebrate around the fire.
The fire was still burning and produced intense heat.
Burners swirl and dance around the man. It’s an orgy of energy.
I radiated out away from the Man to see what else was on the playa on this climactic night.
Great art cars were in full effect that night.
As were all of the art installations.
This place always had great music. I went nuts in here – dancing around on cages and shit.
In bloom.
While you were inside, people would spin the lights around you. The outside world could see in, but you couldn’t see out. The person inside just sees a swirl of lights and colors. Pretty cool and probably even more so if you are under the influence of some hallucinogens.
A similar experience to the one above except with mirrors and strobes.
Otter Pop Girl… She rode around the next day handing out Otter Pops. Hard not to love her.
The last art car picture.
The Exodus begins – and as we entered, we depart in a dust storm…
But things soon settled down and I took the following pictures during the four hours it took to crawl off of the playa.
Well, Ian took this picture of me.
The end of the season.
The Velvet Rocket 