Posts made in August, 2014

This year was marked by weather perturbations. Twice during the building weeks, the city and construction were halted by rain and/or hail, creating delays in building the man or the temple. The man was finished Monday at 5pm and the Temple was opened Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. It’s not unusual to have the Man or the Temple unfinished by the time the city gate opens. A Monday morning rainstorm has shutdown the city once again but this time during the arrival. The rain transformed the city in a muddy pit and all traffic was suspended until it dried out. Several hundreds of people got stuck at the entrance for 24h. The luckiest of them got stopped in Reno, where they had still a bit of civilization. The unluckiest were stopped on the sandy access road...

It’s this time of year! By the time you will read this post, I will be driving to the Black Rock City to Burning Man. If you want to see what the drive is, here a time lapse video I made last year while we drove. [vimeo vimeo.com/73748066 w=880] Burning Man is a massive self-reliance art festival in the Nevada high desert. This year event is completely sold out with 68000 people expected. The idea of Burning Man is to be able to dedicate yourself to the spirit of community, art, and self-expression. If you have not seen my pictures about last year burning man, they are here.

Monks are very present in Myanmar, there are between 400,000 and 500,000 professional monks in a country of about 50 million people. Our photo leader (Tuan) had arranged that we could photograph some young monks (called novices) during an entire afternoon.  Monks rise very early for the alms offering and then have their lunch quite early (around 11am). Since we went and photograph the sunrise that morning, we went to visit a monastery right before their lunch. Monks raised at the monastery were, I guessed, between the age of 5 to 12.  Novices were generally pretty happy to have their photo taken. Their lunch is mainly composed of rice and vegetables. When the gong rings, they form a line from the youngest to the oldest. Each brings his bowl in which he gets a...

Sunday night’s supermoon was the brightest and closest to Earth in 20 years. It was 14% bigger and about 30% brighter than usual. I did my usual research about possible locations in the week leading to the Full Moon. I found one promising location but Saturday was an extremely foggy day here in the San Francisco Bay. I had made up my mind that it was not worth going, until late Sunday afternoon, when a friend of mine sent me this text: “Moon shoot tonight?”. He lives in San Francisco so he had direct information that our friend Karl (see Karl the fog) was not coming over. I drove quickly (but safely) to San Francisco to meet my friend and we went to my planned location. I knew I would not see when the Moon exactly rises over the horizon because of...

A couple weeks ago, I went to take pictures of the PCA GGR Autocross in the old Alameda Naval Base. An autocross is a circuit marked by traffic cones that you have to go through as fast as possible without touching any cones. It’s a very safe way to drive your car at its limits (or at your limits) with very low risks. The course is setup at the old Alameda Navy Base, on the old runway. There is plenty of space for you to spin out of control without touching anything (except your ego). The view from there is fantastic, you are on the other side of the bay, with an unobstructed view of San Francisco: Here is a view of a car going through the course: Most cars are unmodified cars, no extra security except you have to wear an helmet, you are not driving that...