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Black Rock Sunset Panorama

Black Rock Sunset Panorama

Description: Here’s a couple thousand square miles of nothing. I’ve been working on this one for a couple of weeks and it’s just about done. This is the entire Black Rock Desert just after sundown on burn night 2010. It is some of the most desolate and unforgiving wilderness in the western hemisphere. Oh yeah, there are some people camped out over there doing…..'stuff', too. I'm not sure what that's all about. :-) From this vantage point almost 2,000 feet above the playa you can see the tiny town of Gerlach, Nevada, about 13 miles away on the left, over to Navajo and King Lear peaks on the far right. These are about 43 miles down range. Black Rock City sits center and the enormous dust plume coming out of it goes as far as the eye can see to the east. The mighty and foreboding Black Rock Desert; don’t let the fact that you attend Burning Man or enjoy the relative safety of Black Rock City fool you into thinking you can survive out here. I love this place, but I also fear and respect it greatly. It merely allows us to pass, we are granted privilege only, we have no real right to be out here. This is where the land speed record of 755 MPH was set by Andy Green and the Thrust SSC team in 1997, running from left to right and then back again in an hours time. They set off several sonic booms, on land. If the playa ever cooperates (becomes hard pan again) and the rocket cars can run (of which there are currently at least 5 teams waiting) I hope to be able to go back up here and watch the speed. The wind was extreme (bordering on insane) when I shot this and I’ve had a bear of a time lining all of the frames up because of the camera shake. Even with the main rig buried under a couple hundred pounds of rocks it was still oscillating in that terrible wind. The fact that I got any usable shots from this project is remarkable in and of itself. Enjoy. Piss clear.

Year: 2010
Category: Night of the Burn
Keywords: black cameron desert grant hdr high las mountain points rock trego vegas