VR Tour

The Best of Burning Man & Nevada 98 & 99

I've written extensively elsewhere about Burning Man. Here are my first experiments in very large panoramas from those first two years. Other pictures can be found in the photo-essays of my 1998 Burning Man trip and my 1999 Burning Man trip.

The two narrow ones are 30,000 pixels wide, as big as you could make in Photoshop at the time, and that's not even scanned at full resolution. Even larger ones came later.

burn99wide.jpg (8106 x 1018 - 1381K) or VR/Zoom!	360° x 45° (Set) Full size is 8106 x 1018 (8 Megapix) (3' 9" x 6" at 180PPI)
Tall view of city from 6:30 and Esplanade

A wide angle (24mm) 360 degree view of Black Rock City 1999. The man himself is on the left but he's down, being loaded with explosives for the burn that (Saturday) night.

burn98.jpg (21000 x 971 - 4010K) or VR/Zoom!	330° x 15° (Set) Full size is 29963 x 1385 (41 Megapix) (13' 10" x 8" at 180PPI)
Detailed view of 1998 from Refinery

A 330 degree view, close up (90mm lens landscape) of Black Rock City in 1998. The missing 30 degrees contains the man because we ran out of film. This was early in my tripod shooting days and it was shot with a Pentax point and shoot camera. I have this at 21 feet long. The man was down, as you can see in the lower-res, wide-angle shot below.

This was my first film BRC panorama, and as such I devoted a special page to it and others from 98 after I created it. You can see it there at even more resolution.

burn99-narrow.jpg (21000 x 891 - 3677K) or VR/Zoom!	360° x 15° (Set) Full size is 23778 x 1009 (24 Megapix) (11' x 6" at 180PPI)
Detailed shot of BRC

Here's the narrow shot of BRC in 1999. It's a full 360 at 85mm focal length, portrait orientation. I have this one printed 24 feet long -- it's astounding. You can see almost everything in the city, and even the town of Gerlach in the distance in the middle.

wide2_cropped_1.jpg (6770 x 927 - 869K) or VR/Zoom!	360° x 49° (Set) Full size is 6770 x 927 (6 Megapix) (3' 2" x 5" at 180PPI)
Tall shot of 98 (low-res camera)

A digital camera (35mm portrait) 360 degree view of BRC in 1998. I've reprocessed this picture with new tools and while it is low res, it is much better. Notice the tiny size of center camp, the open nature of first camp, and the Nebulous Entity, the main theme installation.

playascene_cropped_1.jpg (8915 x 936 - 1001K) or VR/Zoom!	92° (FL) Full size is 8915 x 936 (8 Megapix) (4' 2" x 5" at 180PPI)
Scene on the Playa

A scene on the playa with a section of the esplanade from 99. Note the flat, dry, bikeable playa compared to 2008. Note the hockey rink. I meant to shoot the whole esplanade from the Man but I waited too long.

lonely50.jpg (6557 x 875 - 1277K) or VR/Zoom!	200° x 26° (Set) Full size is 6557 x 875 (6 Megapix) (3' x 5" at 180PPI)
On the way out, taking US 50 through Nevada

A 200 degree panorama on Highway 50 in Nevada. Dubbed "The Loneliest Highway in America" in the 50s by Life Magazine, it uses this as a tourist slogan today. Not quite as lonely, but still bleak and beautiful.