Prana Machine
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Totali-titty
🕑 Added 2023-10-18 01:22:16 +0000 UTCTOTALITY.
Writing from the bath tub. I’ve touched back down to the ground after the 2023 Annular Eclipse whirlwind this past weekend. This came at the very end of my front range trip so I was ragged and solely propelled forward by my fierce but illogical desire to put my naked body under the totality zone and really feeel it.
I needed something to commemorate the past year of shitshow and going to this spot at this time for this event was so fucking perfect. I’ll tell you more about that in a sec.
I drove the couple of hours to this area where I first starting shooting as a newborn baby in 2018 and has since seen a huge uptick in casual visitors as every year passes.
(I’m actually not sure if I should acknowledge the native land on social media out of respect or keep these places “SeCtReT.” I tend to steer towards the latter when sharing on the internet.)
I used to come out here and be worried I was going to die on account of the harsh endless desert and lack of phone service for 30+ miles. Now I miss having that feeling.
So I at least knew what I was in for. It was totally absurd driving this van out here in the state I was in, so naturally I was spread thin and also forgot every important thing I would need to bring. I arrived before dusk and found a spot before making some camp friends and watching 100 more people cram their way into an already full lot. I had campfires almost practically underneath my van (which is great because that’s where my heater intake is😃).
I didn’t sleep much at all on account of everything that was going on inside of my body……… and also outside of my body.
So when the sun rose I was ready to get the fuck out of that parking lot. Almost everyone stayed put to watch the eclipse from our pop-up badland KOA campground, which gave me a lot of the north wash almost entirely to myself and other hiker photographer types who were not there to fuck around.
You know what I forgot? A backpack. And BATTERIES. To name a couple. I had one halfway charged battery in my camera. I minimalized my gear as best as I could, wrapped it into a makeshift hobo picnic set up with a ghetto rigged strap from a camera cube, and just said fuck it and marched my way through the mess of crowds and into the expansive abyss. This march ended up being some tandem combo of slinging, flinging, crawling, hunching, and “motherfuck”ing as I made my way to a familiar corner of the wash that especially feels like home. It was under 2 miles but I can still feel those sensations in my body right now in this tub. Whatever it took. I made it. If you don’t hear from me for another week this is why.
It was 37 degrees when I got to my spot to throw down my dumbass picnic and make sure my arms were still attached. I didn’t even have any solar glasses/lenses with me to see it with the naked eye. Totality was imminent. I peered around and found the spot. Upon perching there and feeling out the sandstone, I realized every single photographer who was just a little bit farther out than me had a direct view of my naked body, like just a little bit under the sun where they were all peering with telescoping devices. This was not ok! I was in a ton of pain, cramping, and still had crowd heebie jeebies, so I was paralyzed with anxiety. Like I kind of had a moment where I just sat on the ground and considered giving up right there at the finish line. There was absolutely no other possible framing. The camera was so low and so far away from my perch. I couldn’t pivot or slide the tripod in any direction or I’d lose the sun, me, the perch, on account of all of the hills and hoodoos. Turns out it’s hard to frame two things that are 90 million miles apart from down in a canyon.
It was a maddening moment! So I did what I always do and really turned to the present moment for the first time since I got there. I set up camera and my interval timer for a few minutes later, I scurried up the hill, and I had a naked moment right below my perch where the people couldn’t see me. I felt my beating heart. The warmth and sweat I had cultivated on my scramble crawl out. The totally still cold air. The beautiful incessant sun now humbled and cooled by the passing moon. I couldn’t see moon eclipsing with naked eye but I could feel it eclipsing with naked body. Suddenly I realized we were in totality. In that moment it felt like we had always been in totality and I knew nothing else. Everyone around me felt like a friend. But I felt this very feral energy about us too. I felt them in the distance. We all howled. So silly. I heard faint laughter and cheers. Besides that it was dead quiet. I couldn’t see any of them nor them me. I faced the sun and felt that cool empty pocket reverberating down onto my chest and then into the entire wash that held us. I smiled and cried a little bit. The tears were so warm on my face! Then I gracefully stepped onto my perch with more ease than anything else I’d experienced in the many days leading up to this. And I guess my interval timer was right on time for me. It felt like the sun and moon and earth were all right on time for me. I felt so small and so expansive all at once. I knew all of my friends could see me and some were probably taking pictures, but I didn’t mind enough to let it take away from my moment up there that I had worked so hard for and deserved so much. The following moments were equally surreal. Welcoming back the full extent of the solar rays. Suddenly— not really but it felt sudden— we were all blinking like idiots on the middle of the desert in the middle of the bright sun, unsure of where or who we were and how we got there.
I actually haven’t looked at any of the other shots besides this one (the one singular image shared here that is obviously taken on the camera). I only shot two self portrait frames while out there. And a few other experimental things. But I actually went into my camera and scrolled straight to this image as I knew it was “the moment” when I took it. Then I uploaded it and made some very minor tweaks involving cropping and lighting, and here we are now. That goes to say I don’t know what else I got. There could be some magical surprises here that I would share. But this one was the meaningful one to me because it captures the precipice of the whole thing.
In fact I am totally exhausted and unable to tell you about the meaning behind this adventure and why I did it and why it meant so much to me that I did it. (Alluded to on IG). So I’ll share that in another near future post and potentially with some more eclipse imagery.
I love this whole process. It’s so therapeutic and often-cathartic. I’m not lugging giant expensive telescopes out here and taking NASA or NatGeo worthy imagery. I’m doing what I want and what I can in the ways that serve me best and it ends up incredibly intimate and meaningful and gives me a ton of energy (Prana) to keep doing the thing (being alive).
Anyways, last few are some askew BTS phone shots from when I was figuring out what the heck I was gonna do. The very last one is the night I spent in the mountains before the desert. When I tried to peep on some Aspen leaves and instead got snow storm because Colorado and yay Finter.
Finally, fuck patreon for not letting me embed videos, as that would be a lot more fun to share. I can share still imagery but god forbid you give me the power to upload pornographic videos amirite. So anything that looks especially stupid is probably a still from a much less stupid video. 😘
Comments
Prana
No fucking way Doug!!! That’s amazing. I’m definitely going to bask in that this evening. Thank you 🤍
Douglas S. Pierce Books
The cover image for this post, the one you shared on IG is the single most powerful photographic image I have seen from any photographer/model in my time paying attention to fine art photography. Yes, the test of this post amplifies the feelings and power of that image, but even before you wrote this, this was one of my favorite images I have seen by anyone. It is a perfect example of your struggles and your triumphs. It is perfect that you were complete nude, but we cannot see any details of your face, or your body. Yet, if I were to see this image in isolation and told to guess who the model and photographer were…my only possible answer would be a self portrait by you. It is instantly recognizable as you because of the pain, the emotion, the exuberance, and lack of detail. It is just that fucking brilliant.
