The last stop of our road trip, before heading back to San Francisco, was Yosemite National Park. I’d been the most excited to visit here, having seen such incredible images from some photography friends who have visited.

Our first evening set the bar high for the next 2 days. Not far from the famous Glacier Point lookout is the equally breathtaking, but far less well known, Taft Point. After 20 minutes of easy hiking from the trailhead, we arrived at the vista just before sunset.

Truthfully, photos cannot do justice to the scale and magnificence of the view here and it’s actually hard to put it into words. It’s so high, so ridiculously big, that your eyes actually struggle to take it all in at first. It almost doesn’t  look real, more like a life-size painting of perfection.

I had the best seat in the house as the sun set – the entire valley falling away in front of me, 3000 feet below.

The next morning we were up at 5 to drive back into the valley for sunrise (well, when I say ‘we’ I mean James drove and I slept). We made it just in time to capture the first rays of sunrise creeping down the ‘Dawn Wall’ on El Capitan. We luckily chose a morning without a breath of wind; which made for the crystal clear reflections in the still water (although I did freeze my toes off wading across).

I think this was now our forth 5am start in a row so we spent the rest of the day relaxing by the river before taking some more shots for our Hamilton Campaign in the evening. 

We said goodbye to Lake Tahoe and headed a few hours south to Mammoth Lakes. Driving through the Sierra Nevadas is beautiful – the scenery changing from the huge forest and lakes in Tahoe to miles of vast planes and rolling hills, finally changing back to snow capped mountains as we arrived in Mammoth. 

The following morning we shot at dawn on Convict Lake – James and I sharing the stunning reflections on the water with some early rising canoeists – before driving south to Big Pine Lakes. 

The hike to Big Pine lakes is a spectacular way to spend a day. We were lucky to be there just out of high season so almost had the whole trail to ourselves. The hike was a little more hefty than our Lake Tahoe strolls (make sure to bring plenty of water and snacks). The 13 mile round trip (plus lunch and an afternoon nap at the lake) took up most of our afternoon but the perfect blue water and rugged, wild landscape made it well worth it. 

Until recently I’d never traveled America. Somehow, other places and projects always seemed to come first. But, just like with Afrika Burn in March – James managed to convince me, last minute, to join him. Before I knew it, I’d finished the last of my summer shoots, and we’d packed up and waved goodbye to London. Five films later (James slept the whole flight over as always) and we landed in San Francisco and drove straight up to Reno, in Nevada, for the night to meet our wild / adorable burner friend, Bianca. The next 8 days was a Burning Man blur but after a good night’s sleep (plus several showers to get the dust out) we got back on the road and zipped south to Lake.

Lake Tahoe is STUNNING. It kind of reminded me of Lake Como. But rather than being surrounded by little Italian cafes and restaurants it is engulfed by mountains and forests (featuring the occasional Starbucks). It felt much more wild and just BIG. It took us hours to drive around the lake which sits on the Nevada and California border. 

On our first morning we left our cute little cabin in the forest and headed to a beautiful spot up the road, Emerald Bay, to shoot content for our Hamilton Watch campaign. 

I love this image as we got to play with foreground (the rocks), mid ground (James wearing the watch) and background (the water). I wanted to create a white bokeh effect in the water to give the feeling of movement. It took us a few goes to get it right as James had to really kick his legs in the water to create the right amount of splash. I’m really happy with how it turned out!

Our next shot involved me getting IN the water; which was VERY cold (especially as we were shooting at sunset to catch the golden light).

My favourite images often involve playing / manipulating light in interesting ways. In this, I love the sort of dappled, broken effect of James’ reflection in the moving water.

We spent the next day enjoying the sun by the lake. I’m a water baby so spent most of the day swimming / in a bikini.

Whereas James prefers dry land to swimming (he does not float) and spent most of the afternoon making up his own boulder problems and flaunting his back muscles. 

If you’re visiting Lake Tahoe I really recommend sunset at Zephyr Point. It’s about a 10 minute walk from the road and the view over the lake is absolutely stunning – just be careful of the sheer drop!

Every year thousands of ‘burners’, from all over the world, gather at Black Rock City in the Nevada Desert for The Burning Man Event: 8 days living as one huge community embodying radical self-expression, gifting and self-reliance.  After getting a taste of this amazing experience at Afrika Burn earlier this year I decided to join James on another adventure into the desert…

It’s safe to say that, if you haven’t visited Burning Man before, you will spend 8 days being ‘wowed’. I was first blown away by the sheer size of the space. Afrika Burn was pretty big but the expanse of ‘playa’ that Black Rock City occupies is something else entirely. To give some context: Glastonbury festival is considered to be pretty large at 900 acres (500 football pitches). Burning man is over 5 times the size at nearly 5000 acres (3000 football pitches). For that reason it’s absolutely essential to bring a ‘burner bike’ to get around (an offroad bike which you revamp with lights, sparkles, fur and anything else you can think of). 

Then there’s the setting of the whole place. Black Rock City sits on the ‘playa’ in the Nevada Desert about 150 miles north of Reno. There’s no wonder that one of the principles of The Event is Radical Self Reliance – during the day the temperature frequently reaches 35 – 40 celsius but can plummet during the night to single digits and it’s even gone below freezing in the past. Then there’s the dust. The dust gets EVERYWHERE. In your tent, in your clothes, in your food. It’s important to take goggles and some kind of balaclava / facemask with you as, when the wind picks up, you need to be able to cover up. We had 1 dust storm during the week where we literally couldn’t see 10 feet in front of us and had to hide under an art installation until it passed (although this did make for some epic photos). 

The next wow for me was the Art. There are hundreds of Art Installations scattered across the playa and ‘deep playa’. You could honestly spend the whole week just exploring them. My favourite art installation was this huge mini village / tower structure called ‘The Folly’. One night we heard live music playing as we passed and we went in to take a look. There were hundreds of people gathered in the middle and up on the towers singing and dancing along to a one man improvised song writer! He would choose words from the audience and make up entire songs and riffs with them for us to all singalong to. 

But one of the most magical parts of the whole experience are the principles of radical gifting and radical inclusion. The whole event is put on by the people who attend it. James and I were in a 70 person camp called ‘Bubbles and Bass’ and our gift was to throw sunrise champagne parties every morning of the burn. So from 6am to midday our dance floor would open, our DJ’s would start playing and our lovely Champagne Fairies would keep everyone well hydrated. 

My gift to the burn was photography – capturing the beautiful moments shared between the incredible people that we met over the course of the burn. For me it felt like everywhere I looked I found magic; the wild and wonderful outfits, the amazing artwork, all set in this otherworldly backdrop with a sprinkle of playa dust.

Before I went, James described Burning Man to me like this: “Imagine Mad Max had a baby with a Unicorn and that baby went to live on mars with 70,000 of it’s most creative and equally crazy friends. That’s about as close as I can get.”

I don’t think he’s far off. But, personally, i’ve found that, at both Burning Man and Africa Burn, it’s been the people that have made it. The art, the location the parties and the scale and magnificence of these events make them unique and incredible in their own right. But the community, culture and the amazing people I met, both in passing ones as well as the friends i’ve made for life, are the reason these events are so special.

I hope you enjoy looking through some of my ‘Burn’ imagery!