Pre­pare to Reduce Pressure

The big & famous Burn­ing Man event is held every Labor Day, in the Nevada desert. Some friends go every year. But my wife & I have never been, together any­way. Good news for us: the Burn­ers love the main Labor Day event so much, they cre­ate a minia­ture ver­sion here in San Fran­cisco, in Octo­ber. They call it Decom­pres­sion. The site is just a few blocks from our home here in the city.

“Minia­ture ver­sion” makes it sound small, but only com­pared to the now-gigantic Burn­ing Man in the desert.  Sev­eral blocks of Indi­ana Street get blocked off, and then *packed* with party peo­ple. A good chunk of San Fran­cisco moves to “the Playa” in the Nevada desert each Labor Day. I’m not sure how many show up to Decom­pres­sion here in town, but it’s in the thou­sands.  The cos­tumes are amaz­ing, and so are many of the installed works of art.

We knew how much energy the atten­dees put into their dif­fer­ent forms of expres­sion. So it was a nat­ural event to pho­to­graph! Walk­ing around with a pro cam­era made me pretty pop­u­lar. Folks had put so much time into their cos­tumes, they were eager to “get shot” so to speak.

In the swirl of color & bod­ies, I noticed a few ele­gant women, in beau­ti­ful, exotic dress.  As always, I asked their per­mis­sion before shoot­ing. They were happy to oblige, and took a short moment to pose for me. Here is the result, click for LARGE view.

Belly Dancers — Burn­ing Man Decom­pres­sion 2011
©2012 J. Litwin

Turns out they were from Fat Chance Belly Dance®, a belly danc­ing school here in San Fran­cisco. But I didn’t know that, I just kept walk­ing and shooting.

Fat Chance Belly Dance® Troupe
Prin­ci­pal Com­pany Mem­ber Sandi, Stu­dent Dancers Laura, Shelly, along with other Prin­ci­pal & Stu­dent Members

It hap­pens a lot: you take a photo that doesn’t seem par­tic­u­larly note­wor­thy. Then you get home, review, and one just leaps out at you. Well, this photo was it. And it had stiff com­pe­ti­tion, believe me. There were hun­dreds of decent, eye-catching shots. But none could hold your eye like this one. There was some­thing about the serene smiles of these women, and with two per­fectly head on, and one per­fectly in profile.

High Above — Burn­ing Man Decom­pres­sion 2011 San Francisco

So we made a Memento Photo Can­vas, and placed it in the front of the store. I hoped some­one would rec­og­nize one of these women, and let them know about the photo. We didn’t care to make any money off the shot, we just wanted them to have it an enjoy it!

Well, many months went by. Their beau­ti­ful gaze drew cus­tomers into our store. Many clients chose to just stand and look at the photo. Then one fine day, a cus­tomer from our early days hap­pened by. She stopped cold in the cor­ri­dor, then basi­cally leapt into our store. “Do you know those women???” she asked, with a big smile.

“No, but I wish we did, we’d like them to have the canvas!”

“Well I know Shelly! That’s the dancer on the right!” No kid­ding, in less than 90 min­utes, Shelly her­self had danced right over, and was stand­ing in our store!

Shelly Loved her Photo on Can­vas
©2012 Memento Press, Inc.

Shelly LOVED the can­vas. She took it home and gave us the fol­low­ing testimonial:

“I love the rich­ness of color, the light and tex­ture the can­vas con­veys. I love that it looks like some­thing out of National Geo­graphic. It is very ‘other worldly.’

I first saw it on text and it was impres­sive. But when you see it up close and per­sonal it really takes your breath away.

It’s already hung on the wall in the space where I prac­tice belly dance at home. It has its own wall, heh heh. You can’t miss it!

Friends and fam­ily walk by and will just stop dead in their tracks and stare at it.”

I asked her, “Would you con­sider can­vas prints or metal prints again in the future?”

Shelly said, “Absolutely.”