The Photoboof came, saw, and took 6152 pictures, and by far its best pictures yet. This year I added a green screen to the Boof, meaning the Boofers got a different background for each picture which they could either interact with or ignore, but either way their pictures got an extra splash of color. The Gammablog called it the definitive self-portrait gallery, and I like the description. I was watching a pro photographer take portraits out there, having people "turn a little more toward me, look up a little", that kind of thing, and I was thinking how he might be getting good pictures but he's not really capturing people acting like themselves. In the Photoboof people definitely act like themselves, sometimes so much so that I have to edit their pictures so they don't end up on a "girls of Burning Man" website...

And Burning Man was the usual exhausting blast, over too fast, and a week later I'm still cleaning out the dust, but all very worth it. Its very uplifting to think that something so great and extreme can still happen in America.

Anyway, lots of ways to browse the pictures:

Dancing Faces Interface (the pictures dancing around the screen, my favorite)

Strip-by-Strip Interface (the strips, one by one)

Map Animation (all the pictures get tagged with GPS coordinates, so here they are placed on a map of Black Rock City in chronological order)

Frame-by-Frame Movie (a movie of all the pics, frame by frame. Fairly cool but I really need to figure out how to compress to Flash a bit better. The original just looks soooo good compared to this.)

Here's a map showing where the Boof made each of its 1538 photo strips:

 

Here's a few pics from Captain Fisheye aka Justin Credible. I heart this picture:

 

In this one you can see the Boof's green screen background without any naked people for a change:

 

I like this pic, another good one from Justin Credible.

 

 

 A good one from Maxime:

 

Aerial view:

 

Me in the stylin blue jacket and authentic made-in-Austin-Texas cowboy hat working the Boof. "Yes, thank you, I'd love a frosty beverage."

  

I love this shot. Its really hard to actually drive anywhere in the Photoboof since people come running out of their camps asking to take pictures. Here we are with ice in the back, trying to get home, and people are literally begging.

 

I admit, it doesn't suck at all.  

 

And here's the Misfortune Teller, the sequel to a cigarette machine I made a few years ago. I rigged an old gumball machine to take tokens, which are in that bin near the person's left hand. During the hot part of the day we'd type fortunes on scraps of paper and put them in little 2" gumball machine capsules, and people would put a token in and get their misfortune.

 

It was surprisingly popular, it turns out people are fiends for misfortunes, we had a lot of trouble keeping the thing stocked.

 

We even had the waitresses from Bruno's coming out for their daily fix.

 

All lit up at night.

 

Here's Razz cranking out the misfortunes, and me cracking the whip. More fortunes! Get back to work!

 

Razz all strapped in. Incidentally he's opening a storefront in the Mission to handle the huge demand for misfortunes, something tells me he won't be drinking Pabst next year...

 

Here's a happy customer. Interestingly, his misfortune read "you smell like a bag of dicks"... It was pretty amazing how often the misfortunes were perfectly suited to the person. Not that I know for sure that this guy smells like a bag of dicks, but I have my suspicions.

 

One more shot of the Misfortune Teller. People kept thinking the "25 cent" thing on the front was serious, and they'd even put quarters in, so I replaced it with the "cents-less" lettering here.

 

A good picture of the Boof's projector in action (thanks Charlotte!):

 

Another view:

 

Projecting onto someone's something or other.

 

The Boof projecting onto the giant dome at the north end of Black Rock City. That dome is massive, probably 150 feet tall? A very surreal sight with our projections like a drive-in movie.

 

Another view.

 

Projecting straight down onto the playa surface, my favorite projection screen.

 

Its very directional. If you're standing to the side it just looks like colored lights, but when you look from the angle of the projector it comes alive.  

  

I love the night mode pics for some reason. It always amazes me how many people we can fit in and on the Boof.

 

Japa sent in this beautiful one:

 

And of course, Paul keeps an eye on everything:

  

Did you get any pictures of the Photoboof in action? Or any pictures of the Misfortune Teller? If so send them over, I didn't take many non-automated pictures this year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

what are you looking for?