Further Future

VOYAGE 001: THE BEGINNING

By Ellie Pritts

May 7^th, 2015

a big party in the desert...

Of course I was going to cover this event.

Further Future is a brand new festival by the cool folks at Robot Heart. I’ve worked plenty of festivals but this was my first time working with one that has never happened before. It was really exciting and I had no idea what to expect. Except for dust, lots and lots of dust.

Above: aerial view of the festival grounds

Below: fun all day and night at the Robot Heart truck and a stellar performance by Hundred Waters during golden hour

Below: Valley of Fire State Park

Going mirrorless in a dust storm

I usually carry two Canon 5D Mark III bodies, a 70-200mm and a few wider lenses on me when I shoot festivals. The end result is me comically bogged down in gear, and not so comically suffering from all sorts of back problems afterwards. One time I even had a perfectly formed 70-200mm bruise on my thigh from running around; my lens hitting my leg with each step. Since I was shooting a brand new festival in a brand new environment, I figured I’d go for the additional challenge of using a completely different camera to shoot (mostly) everything.

I wanted to rent a Leica but couldn’t justify the cost, so I looked into the Fuji X100T. I read rave reviews, poured over the specs and decided it was a suitable alternative for my experiment. Prior to this fest, I had only shot mirrorless a handful of times, and always awkwardly. I wanted to be sold on this much, much smaller and less conspicuous camera and I was really excited to try it out.

I fell in love

After my initial fumblings with new controls and an offset viewfinder, I was totally blown away by the images I was getting out my little Fuji. The sensor is magical. I cheated with my Canon a few times just for comparison and found that by and large, the Fuji outperformed each time. Obviously there are some big advantages still to having a dSLR, I needed it for telephoto stuff. But really other than that, the Fuji was everything I needed out in the desert.

there was a drone, too

When I wasn’t shooting with the Fuji, I was shooting from above with a DJI Inspire 1! The photo below was taken from the Inspire near the entrance of the Valley of Fire state park. Once we drove a little further down the road we saw a big sign stating “NO DRONES”. Oops.

Below: a sweet house near Lake Mead, festival goers dancing on top of shipping containers and taking in the sunset on the ground

back to life, back to reality

I’m really happy I had the chance to experience the first year of a festival, in the desert, with a bunch of new equipment. I was definitely not in my comfort zone and I loved it. I’m excited to see what lies “in the future” for Further Future and I’m hoping to have similar adventures at Burning Man this year. I’ve never done that either, so expect a mega post about it if that happens!