More Art Cars @ DHFest
Continuing on from my post about the @kuker.art.car, there were two other art cars at the Desert Hearts Festival this year. One was a big pineapple, which I’d also seen at Dirtybird Campout in 2019. The other was a big dragon that could shoot fire out of its mouth.
I particularly like the pineapple. It’s decked out with LEDs and is basically just a bed on wheels. Lots of folks lounged around on it throughout the fest, and one night I watched as a group of probably 20 friends, all dressed up in pineapple onesies gleefully gathered around it as their unexpected temple. At DHFest, the pineapple was mostly stationary. Seemed like the fest didn’t want anyone to get run over on accident - understandable. When I saw it at DB Campout, though, I remember it driving all around, and at one point even trying to slowly drive into the big crowd at the main stage. It also had its own speakers on it and was its own moving party into the early morning once the scheduled festival sets stopped at night. The proliferation of renegade parties at DB Campout are definitely a fun contrast to DHFest’s one-stage-one-vibe atmosphere. I like both of them in their own ways.
These first two shots were taken on transparency film - Fujifilm’s Fujichrome Velvia 50. This was the first time I’d shot Velvia 50 and I’m in love with the vibrancy of the colors. I was using a simple incident light meter to figure out exposure settings, which worked well in the uniform daytime light out on the beach. I was a little worried about how the shots would turn out, since previous attempts at shooting Kodak’s transparency film Ektachrome 100 for some outdoor landscape photos showed that it was very sensitive to exposure, where shots turned out fairly muted if I got the exposure off by a bit. Maybe I got the exposures right this time, maybe Velvia 50 is more forgiving, I’m not sure. Regardless, these shots came out beautifully vibrant and really match what I remember the scene looking like at the time.
The dragon car and a fur-covered bike. At night, when the music moved to the in-land grassy stage, the art cars would also migrate in there. Other than that, the cars were stationary throughout the festival, though. This one was shot on Portra 800.
The back of the dragon had steps where you could climb up onto the back. It made for a nice perch to look over the party, and lots of people climbed up and danced around on it. These last two were also shot on that same roll of Velvia 50.
One thing about the beach location at DHFest was that the beach was huge, like 10x bigger than the space taken up by the party. That gave it a weird bubble feeling where you were in the party but then if you wanted to go to the bathroom or anywhere else, it was a 5+ minute walk through hot sun in a mostly empty nothingness. It was really hot under the sun and the only sun shade was what you brought yourself (hats and umbrellas). I think a big sun shade covering would have really improved how comfortable and enjoyable it felt down on the beach, even if it just covered part of the area. There were two stages, though only one played music at any given time. The beach stage ran during the day and things migrated up to a grassy area at night which was much more comfortable and where I got most of my enjoyment out of the festival.