I knew I was with kindred spirits when I saw this in town.

First day of manufacturing - it got somewhat more crowded on Friday and Saturday, but there was still plenty of room to spread out.

Bill Zuber 'shocked and awed' the crowd with his smoke ring. This lasted for, what, 4 minutes? Sheesh. How many UFO calls came in to the Mesquite PD??? (And yeah, the sky WAS that blue.) Thanks to Paul Sonne for the picture!

Thursday's safety meeting. "Where do shells go?"

I guess that when you're handing out the shooter's wrist bands, you'll have a lot of folks showing up.

Kevin Bollinger - Chairman Extraordinaire

Pete Wood - Co-Chair Super Extraordinaire, real nice guy.

Chris Spurrell - Manufacturing Chair (pointing at me - which had peculiar-aire.)

Brent holding up the trophy - created from "spare parts" of a past, uh, burn.

Russ Laurie (WPA Prez) and Lyndon King - Safety Chair.

Most of us have member numbers in the hundreds, or thousands. Steve Wilson's (green shirt, center back) member number is #3.

Gary Lemon (Mr. I-Can-Make-My-Body-Weight-In-Flash) and Rob Foelak (Mr. Hey-I-Got-A-Site-We-Can-Use).

I dunno 'bout you, but desert sunsets are stunning.

So are desert sunrises. (Second day of manufacturing - just after 7 a.m.)

On the second night, the moon had just come out. Perfect weather and conditions for pyro.

Colored Gas Mines (or Ghost Mines).

Then Gary Lemon and Rob Foelak set off a gasoline 'mine'. (Something like 36 gallons of gasoline and more than a couple of pounds of flash.)

Bill McGregor had just set of a 12" mine of crackling ground-blooms, but my camera was set for the fireballs. But - the smoke from the mine makes this shot kinda look like a nuclear test.

Aztec demonstrated some of their stuff. I really enjoy doing pyro photography in that magic 10-20 minutes of failing sunset, right before total darkness.

Class C line.

Class C line, someone walking by with a flashlight (bottom right), and a local driving up a hill on the far side of the ravine.

More Class-C

A 10" willow. These kind of shots are particularly hard with a digital camera, as I'm usually set for much brighter material.

Willow with Glitter.

This shell had 4 color-changes - white/green/red/white. Very cool.

Purple rain?

Blue is another hard color to get using digital cameras.

I love ring shells when shooting pictures. The pattern is not necessarily what we remember in our minds eye, so it's a new treat when the picture comes out.

A monstrous 12" shell.

An 8" shell, with lamp-black type stars that blinks to green right at the end.

Sometimes the shutter goes of late (either due to the camera being confused or me just being late), so you don't get the burst. However, sometimes the effect can be rather unexpected. This kinda looks like some kind of evil asteroid or something.

Chris Spurrell made up a 6" shell with some of the brightest Independent Red stars I've ever seen. (Lance Griffin has another shot of this exact same shell at a distance. Looks like the country-side is lit with a whole bunch of fusees.)

This is a 10" Red-Black-Red shell. This was a huge crowd favorite.

I was tickled that this one came out. It's hard to get a good charcoal effect to come out, either on film or with digital.

This was a B-cake. I really like the neon colors.

This was a very interesting Kumuro-type shell with some small inserts. I didn't see it again all weekend, and was glad I caught this one. (So far, this is my favorite picture.)

This is a 12" Red-Black-Red. When the stars went to the second red, some of them took off like bees.

Chris Spurrell showing off his stuff for the day. (Not much time to spend on rockets or shells when you're the Mfg Chair and a seminar presenter.)

Yup, if big is good then more is better. Bottle rockets are OK, but a gross of them is much, much better.

Saturday Night, another 12" mine. This time the camera wasn't set properly - and a really increadible picture was the result. Sure, the stars are all blown-out, but look at the hill. Looks like it's glowing. I love it.

This time I set the camera "properly" for the mine/

Start of Armagedon.

The problem with the Armagedon display was that the breeze swung around in mid show, so for a large part of the display I had smoke in my face.

The Wall-Of-Gasoline. I work at an oil refinery, and help out with some of the fire training. Those props are hot - this one was *very* hot. (Had to check my eyebrows to see if they got singed.)

Another *very* cool shell. And I only saw this one.

The bright splotch is a salute.

One of Bruce Steidling's 20lb BP rockets at lift off.

Red-White-Blue. So it CAN be done.

Another 12" Red-Black-Red.

Group shot (of who didn't skedaddle) at the last night.

Hey, how are the afterglows?

The N.Cal. folks and the S.Cal. folks with their whine, um, wine tasting.

The afterglow was a great time to (finally) sit down, relax, and talk about the day's activities - and what to plan for next year.

Keif Adler and Jay Brown. Some can hold their wine, some can't. (Sing it with me - "One of these folks is not like the other...")

Shawn Brown brought out some Liquid Nitrogen, froze up some bits-o-graham cracker, and handed them out.

End result? As you ate them, you would force some of the vapors out.

Some of the folks could handle it, ...

... some could not.

This being the last night and all, Chris Spurrell had invited some of the members of Pyrophernalia to demonstrate some fire-dancing.

Amber started out with some fans.

Greg then demonstrated the pots.

Did I mention that the wind started up just about 10 minutes after the last shell was shot?

Flaming pots.

This time, both Amber and Greg were dancing with the music. Chris Spurrell had some colored fire pots around the perimeter..

So you need a strong will and a lot of trust in your partner.

At the last, they did a shtick using Chris' colored alcohol flame with some sponge Ti.

And you wondered why Amber attracted a *LOT* of attention? 'Specially with the single crowd? (She's also joining WPA - so expect to see some more demonstrations!)

Thanks to Amber, Chris, and Greg for making this a memorable occasion!