2016

Just about the time I got used to 2015 it was over. The year ripped right on by before giving me a chance to digest it. I am sure most feel the same.

BURN now rocks right into it’s 8th year. Many photographers who got their start right here on BURN and BurnDiary in the last 7 years have gone on to publish books, have exhibitions, get assignments from major magazines, join agencies, get grants, and generally end up with a presence they did not have before. Sure the Emerging Photographer Fund winners might be the obvious who perhaps benefit most, yet all the things I just mentioned have been done by photographers who have simply had essays published here.

Coming up in 2016 the power of BURN to discover new talent will only increase. Soon BURN will be a part of Apple News an app built into every iPhone. Right now Apple News is only available in the U.S., the U.K. and Australia. This will change since Apple is still rolling this new app out. This puts BURN photographers seriously in touch with a large audience and alongside all the top international magazines. For a small boutique blog site this is a big jump.

Just to keep things in perspective, when BURN started in 2008 the iPhone, or any smartphone, just did not play the role they play now. There was no Instagram. What? A world without Instagram? Who can remember that far back?

Now the smart phone is indispensable for most of us. People get their news, their pictures, their purchases, their banking, and find their way home with the GPS on their phones just to name a few necessities. We are married to our phones. Can’t live without them, and the primary way we see most pictures and take most pictures most of the time. Actually at this point the phone is the way we communicate with most people most of the time. Ironically no more phone calls. Texting rules.

So no surprise, technology rules our times. Yet not really. The reason BURN will be on Apple News is not because we have any special technology. Ha ha. We are operating on a cobbled together website that is in great need of repair or remodeling . Nope, Apple wants us for only one reason. Content. Our stories, our pictures.

The machines alone are sterile. They need content to be of any practical use. So technology will roll ahead as usual and great storytellers will rule. Authorship will be prized more than ever. Authored personalized content will be the only content seriously regarded by editors and curators and yes by the so called mass audience as well. The “mass audience” is really at this point small audiences garnered by authors. Photographic authors among them.

Is this you? Do you have something to say? Or do you just want to sit back, relax, and watch what comes in? Either way is fine.

Happy New Year to all of this BURN audience. Some of you have been here since the beginning. Some of you only see us on FaceBook or Instagram. No matter. We will try to give you a good ride in 2016. Stay tuned.

 

-dah-

 

BRAZIL. Bahia. 2002. New Year's Eve revelers watch fireworks as flashes are reflected in the tide.

 

81 thoughts on “2016”

  4. Paul

    Happy New Year to you David, your Burn crew and all Burnians.
    This site is so amazing, been here right from Roadtrips and wow that feels so far away but close to the heart. Thanks for this magic train ride, been hanging my neck out the window since the first essay enjoying the astounding views on life you’ve shown us. These eight years have changed me and saved me more than a couple of times. Keep on swinging my swing please!
    Cheers Paul

  5. a civilian-mass audience

    DAVIDB. …reported .ok
    THOMAS…reported.ok (of course)
    THODORIS…reported.ok
    PAUL…reported.ok
    AKAKY …has reported .ok

    APPLE!!!… Together WE can do miracles !!!

    I am reporting from Greece therefore I am not going to have Apple news BUT I have oranges and I will wait…I am optimistic.
    you know me by now,I can wait …helloooo BURNIANS, please,keep reporting…I have a list and I am gonna start knocking some doors…

    BOBBY …you are next

  14. david alan harvey

    KYUNGHEE LEE

    always such a pleasure to hear from you…and remembering such a nice time in Korea with you and the Haenyeo women…yes yes i still owe you a print…i did not forget…i am just behind!!!!

    hugs,love, david

  16. a civilian-mass audience

    MR.HARVEY…reported,ok. ( yes, I am the drumfire cause I am a BURNIAN) Viva FOREVER !!!
    KYUNGHEE…reported,ok.
    VIRGILD…reported,ok.
    IMANTS…in progress…Chinese New Year or Birthday? waiting for update…

    Thank YOU !!!

  18. pAtrIcIO m.

    @ ALL: Happy new year everyone! I will always remember this post, something was cooking in the air a few years ago… And the “meal” was/is as great of a 3 stars MICHELIN Restaurant!

    http://davidalanharvey.typepad.com/

    Live from the Kibbutz :D

    Endless energy! Infinite photography! I will submit some recent work, I’ve done this previous months.
    Hope to see everyone soon! Shine. P.

    “A goal without a plan is just a wish” from Antoine de Saint Exupéry

  19. Frostfrog

    Happy New Year, David, Diego, Francesca and all followers of Burn. Reporting in as ordered Civi – from the parking lot of the farthest north library in North America because, even though they are closed on Sundays their wireless reaches beyond their walls and I can log on with my iPhone. Thank you for the news about Apple News, David.

  21. a civilian-mass audience

    FROSTY …reported,ok…thank you for going above and beyond !!!
    PATRICIOM…reported,ok
    MARCIN…reported,ok

    BOBBY
    ROBERTA
    GORDON
    PANOS
    AUDREY
    SIDNEY
    EVA
    KATHARINA
    JIMMY

    Please report …

  22. Roberta Tavares

    Hello dear Burn family! A brilliant creative surprising 2016 for all of you out there …Hope I can cross paths with more of you in this year in some remote corners around the Globe and to deliver in person some hugs and laughs. It is always a pleasure the meetings and connections I’ve been building here and to have the validation and extension of this exchange also in physical presence too. I really celebrate the fortune to have had the opportunity to know better many of you in 2015. Thank you so much Dave, Burnians for keep the fire burning and bringing so much inspiration to my daily routine. Even if im in silence… you can be sure Im following you ! ps) Civi… we love you …we truly do!

  23. Carlo

    Happy New Year David and ALL Burnians!
    Looking forward to 2016.
    It’s quiet around here sure but the content keeps coming and coming….that’s why we are here no? to see what’s new and fresh and the emerging photographers and all that good stuff!

    Perhaps we will see burn diary in print this year?
    And your Beach Games?

  24. michael kircher

    DAH > Road Trips > Burn… been a hell of a ride.

    Thanks for everything. Thanks for the inspiration, the swift kick in the pants, the occasional chats, the encouragement and brutally honest critiques, thanks for publishing my Potomac Gorge project… and on and on.

    Have a great 2016 Burnians! See you in C’ville later this year?

    Big love,
    -MK

  25. Jeremy Wade Shockley

    Welcome to the New Year Burnians!!

    Eight years…YES! It seems like yesterday…or forever. Hard to remember “online” photography without BURN. Life is better with BURN.

    Congrats on the next step in visibility for our BURN community David & Best to everyone in their 2016 endeavors! Cheers, Jeremy

  26. a civilian-mass audience

    ROBERTA…reported,ok ( “we love you…we truly do” thank youuuuuuu…WHAT NOT TO LOVE !!!)
    CARLO…reported,ok
    MICHAELK…reported,ok
    JEREMY…reported,ok

    THANK you…and now, I am calling some BURNIANS…expect me, I am going to find you,ALL of YOU…
    BOBBY
    GORDON
    PANOS
    AUDREY
    SIDNEY
    EVA
    KATHARINA
    JIMMY
    ANDREWS.
    KURT
    MICHAEL YOUNG

  28. Justin Smith

    Happy New Year, Burnians!!!

    I just know 2016 is gonna rock – I can feel it in my bones!

  31. a civilian-mass audience

    BOBBY..reported.ok ( thank you for now…you can bring your 5000-word report later,hiihii)

  32. Cesar

    Happy New Year to everybody in Burn! I wish you the best for 2016!

    8 February? It´s my birthday ha ha …

    Cheers form Spain

  33. Sidney Atkins

    Who am I to spoil the party when CIVI insists?
    Best wishes to all Burnians, and especially you old veterans of ‘Road Trips,’ for a happy, healthy, and productive New Year in 2016 (or the Year of the Monkey which officially begins on Feb.8).

    As one of the ‘elders of the tribe’ I hope I will be forgiven a piece of editorializing: Whatever else your New Year’s resolutions include, I hope they also include making a serious dent in your carbon footprint. Seriously kids, this is our only inhabitable planet, it is in big trouble, and it is only your cumulative decisions and actions that will save it. Use your rich imaginations to find ways to support yourself, express yourself, and have fun without burning so much fossil fuel.

    Regards and sincere hopes to all!

  34. a civilian-mass audience

    And who am I not to celebrate when SIDNEY appears !!!
    SIDNEY…reported,ok
    CESAR…reported,ok ( February 8th !!! see you soon)
    IMANTS…we know, you will be here to celebrate CESAR’S birthday and the Chinese New Year as officially has been confirmed by SIDNEY !!!

    GORDON
    PANOS
    AUDREY
    EVA
    KATHARINA
    JIMMY
    ANDREWS.
    KURT
    MICHAEL YOUNG
    DOUG
    WENDY
    LAURAM.

  35. a civilian-mass audience

    “Whatever else your New Year’s resolutions include, I hope they also include making a serious dent in your carbon footprint. Seriously kids, this is our only inhabitable planet, it is in big trouble, and it is only your cumulative decisions and actions that will save it. Use your rich imaginations to find ways to support yourself, express yourself, and have fun without burning so much fossil fuel.”
    SIDNEY

  40. a civilian-mass audience

    ORDON
    PANOS
    AUDREY
    EVA
    KATHARINA
    JIMMY
    ANDREWS.
    KURT
    MICHAEL YOUNG
    DOUG
    WENDY
    LAURAM.
    ANTON
    ORLANDO

    Please,report…

  45. a civilian-mass audience

    CHARLESP…reported,ok
    PANOS…reported,ok

    AKAKY…”HAPPY 2017″… “I know its going to be good year!”

    GORDON
    AUDREY
    EVA
    KATHARINA
    JIMMY
    ANDREWS.
    KURT
    MICHAEL YOUNG
    DOUG
    WENDY
    LAURAM.
    ANTON
    ORLANDO

    Please,report…

  51. a civilian-mass audience

    MW…reported,ok

    GORDON
    AUDREY
    EVA
    KATHARINA
    JIMMY
    ANDREWS.
    KURT
    MICHAEL YOUNG
    DOUG
    WENDY
    LAURAM.
    ANTON
    ORLANDO

    Please report…

  52. a civilian-mass audience

    Dearest MR.DAVID BOWIE…you are thousand miles away and THANK YOU

    “This is Major Tom to Ground Control
    I’m stepping through the door
    And I’m floating in a most the peculiar way
    And the stars look very different today

    For here
    Am I sitting in a tin can
    Far above the world
    Planet Earth is blue
    And there’s nothing I can do”

    BUT there is something WE CAN DO…can you hear me BURNIANS?

    thank you for reporting…

  53. a civilian-mass audience

    and yes,I LOVE YOU ALLL…

    Give a hug now to a person next to you…doesn’t matter who

    reporting from Greece
    your civi

  55. Ross Nolly

    I wouldn’t mind a dollar now, for every hour I spent in my bedroom as a teenager listening to “Wild-eyed Boy From Freecloud”…….. The oldies I grew up with are steadily dropping off the perch…. :-(

  56. Akaky

    I would prefer not to drop off the perch, if I could have my own way on this, nor would I like to drop off the canned salmon. Given my choice in the matter, I would prefer to drop off a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup or some lime Jello, if there weren’t any peanut butter cups available at the time.

  58. @photohumourist

    Panos, someone of Facebook said, Lemmy, Bowie and today Alan Rickman have died. Donald Trump is 69. I’ll leave it there.

    But more the the point, of course and a little late – HAPPY NEW YEAR 2016 one and all.

  59. a civilian-mass audience

    * drop off the perch = Bite the dust (Die)

    for our non-English speaking BURNIANS !!!

  63. a civilian-mass audience

    North America are you ready for some “white powder” ?

    keep reporting …I will be back ,Tokyo time !!!

  64. a civilian-mass audience

    All my love BURNIANS…be safe, don’t worry about pics…wherever you are in this planet…my suggestion:

    “Be safe with Passion”

    civi

  68. Akaky

    All very well and good, but here’s some news that you can actually use…

    I don’t go to town very often—I am no one’s idea of a social butterfly—and so when I do go out I want to make sure than I am going to a good place with excellent food and nice ambiance. Once upon a time, finding such a place would involve going through newspaper after newspaper looking for reviews, but nowadays all I need do is check the Internet. Almost all restaurants have their own websites now, complete with hours and links to reviews proclaiming how wonderful they are, and with menus listing the specialties of the house available for everyone to read. I think this is a very good thing, although sometimes I wonder if the menus are too much of a good thing.

    I bring all of this largely unnecessary detail because I have a bad habit of not getting to the point in the first paragraph, which I know many of you find annoying in the extreme and, to tell the truth, irritates me as well, but I fear that it is a stylistic tic that I am stuck with at this point. In any case, I was reading the menu of a new Mexican restaurant here in our happy little burg—they had their soft opening a week ago and some of my friends recommended the place to me—when I noticed that amongst the fillings offered with their homemade tortilla tacos were children and Jamaican jerks. This took me aback; these are not the sort of things anyone would expect to see on a restaurant’s menu, especially a restaurant that hasn’t really opened yet. The average taco connoisseur expects to see fish, pork, or beef as a filling, although in some places one can get kangaroo, cockatoo, or emu too; I should point out here that I would not actually eat a fish taco if one of my brothers’ lives depended on it—I hate fish with just about every fiber of my being. I hate liver, eggs, and asparagus as well, but I would eat them if one of my brothers’ lives depended on it…maybe. No, not maybe, definitely, sort of, and only if Mom made me. I suppose I should say something about the use of children as a taco filling, but an Irish clergyman of my acquaintance has modestly proposed something along these lines a while ago and so I recommend that you peruse his recommendations. I agree with most of his major points and I see no reason to repeat those points here.

    I do, however, wish to comment on the use of Jamaican jerks in Mexican cuisine. This seems to me an act of cultural appropriation on a truly monstrous scale, nothing less than the forced bastardization of two national cuisines that do not derive from the same cultural and culinary sources and share no common traditions. And to what purpose? Like Tex-Mex, chop suey, and Chicago style deep dish pizza, using Jamaican jerks as filling is less a celebration of culinary mestizaje than a surrender to the unyielding demands of Americanization and assimilation, a demand that all the world’s cuisines subsume their cultural autonomy into the black hole of the American melting pot and transform themselves into peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
    As if this astonishing act of cultural imperialism were not enough, I heard on NPR the other day that, following many allegations from consumers that the Jamaican jerks they’d eaten could not be the real thing, the state Department of Consumer Affairs had investigated several restaurants with Jamaican jerks on the menu for false advertising and that the consumers’ allegations were true. Approximately thirty-five percent of all restaurants advertising Jamaican jerks in their tacos or as a separate menu item were not using Jamaican jerks at all; these restaurants were using locally grown American dumbasses instead. One veteran department investigator told the NPR reporter covering the story that this was one of the most blatant cases of false advertising and consumer fraud that he had ever seen.

    Nor is consumer fraud we are dealing with here. The use of American dumbasses in place of Jamaican jerks who should have gotten those jobs is an in your face example of nativist prejudice and racism at its worst. I understand, as does anyone who has to deal with the public everyday, that dealing with jerks of any race or nationality is always a bit trying—jerks wouldn’t be jerks if they weren’t trying—but to deny jerks work simply because they are jerks is un-American in principle and probably a civil rights violation in practice. While it may be too early to demand that the Attorney General’s office open an investigation into this matter, I fell that the restaurants involved should pay the Jamaican jerks they deprived of a livelihood some restitution for their pain and suffering, and also for involving them in an act of cultural appropriation that I am sure these good people did not want to take part in.

    I should, I guess, end this discussion with a brief review of the food. The child-filled taco was very nice, I thought—the meat was tender, but a bit too spicy for my taste, and the pulled Jamaican jerk made with real Jamaican jerks was quite good. You can tell the difference; American dumbasses tend to be bland and the meat tends to be a bit fattier—and it surprises me that any restaurant would think that they could pass off such a clearly inferior product and that no consumer would notice the difference. I do recommend the Jamaican jerk taco, if you like that sort of thing, and also the steak fajita, which was very nice and a welcome change to the less conventional fare. I also recommend that if you have a restaurant advertising Jamaican jerk in your area that you call your local consumer affairs department and ask if they know if the restaurant is selling the real thing. You really do not want to waste your money on a cheap imitation.

  69. Sidney Atkins

    AKAKY,

    Yes, I am your eternal bête-noire, forever on the lookout for your slip-ups and sins of commission and omission, and all too eager to humiliate you in public! Chalk it up to jealousy and immaturity…

    Your penultimate paragraph above contains two glaring mistakes: You wrote,”Nor is consumer fraud we are dealing with here.” Perhaps you meant to write, “Nor is consumer fraud ALL we are dealing with here,” ??? And then
    “…investigation into this matter, I fell that the restaurants involved…” surely should be: “I FELT that the restaurants involved…”

    And aside from that, referring to the actual content, I am fairly sure you have probably had the misfortune to have been exposed at an impressionable age to poorly prepared, nay abused, asparagus, which is all too common in Anglo-American cuisine. I grew up thinking that I too hated asparagus until I encountered it freshly picked and properly prepared (and above all not overcooked). And in Japan I discovered delicious ways of using asparagus I had never imagined. So I hold out hope for your ultimate conversion and redemption.

    Cheers,

  71. Akaky

    Sidney, thank you yet again. I really should proofread this stuff more often than I do. I checked the handwritten first draft and yes, ALL and FELT are there, so this is a case of my dropping words as I type. I dislike typing almost as much as I dislike asparagus; these horrid screeds are usually twice as long in the handwritten version than they are typed out, usually because I don’t want to be bothered typing everything I’ve written, and therefore I drop big chunks of text as I go along. Those two words were probably unwitting victims of my cutting as a form of laziness syndrome.

  74. a civilian-mass audience

    I will cry now…cause I love our ACADEMIANS…THANK YOU !!!

    JOHNYG…reported,ok !!!

  75. a civilian-mass audience

    IMANTS…February 8th !!!

    you can officially report …Happy New Year …Chinese BURNIANS!!!

  76. a civilian-mass audience

    “I felt once more how simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. Nothing else.”
    ― Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek

    I love you ALLLLLLLL !!!

  77. a civilian-mass audience

    My BURNIANS…please report…there is a cure for “laziness syndrome” * (see AKAKY’S post)!!!

    civi

  78. a civilian-mass audience

    “I know nothing. There is nothing that I know. But the heart senses certain things. Let your heart speak, question faces, do not listen to tongues.”
    ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

    …the heart senses…oime…UMBERTO is going Upstairs…

    I love you ALLLLLL !!!

  79. lisa hogben

    Hmmmmm…. I wonder if you will remember me Civi? Its been a while since I have checked in here… But I have decided its probably time to engage with the world of photography again after a rather long absence…

    I hope everyone is well and that Burn is powering into 2016… I mean it is February already…

    A word of warning to all of you Americans… I have full intention of coming and meeting you all at some time this year… to go back and fall in love with New York all over again and finally make it down that east coast all the way to New Orleans…

    Its the plan anyway… to reinvigorate my life and burn the ties that have held me for far too long..

    Happy 2016!

  80. a civilian-mass audience

    LISAH…reported,OK.
    Yes,Aussie, I am following you and I am wishing all the best…I have full intention to meet you too!!!

    Viva BURNIANS!!! I love you ALL !!!

    Civi
    Reporting from BURNing Grecolandia …

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