Above: Brett Dennen on the Main Stage

Virginia never looked so good. The rolling mountains of Appalachia sliding into autumn flavors; crisp, clear, star-filled nights tempered by the mid-day deep blue cloudless sky; sweet rhythms filing the air and a few thousand music enthusiasts camping in the meadows of the Devils Backbone Brewery — it was The Festy Experience.

In its second year, The Festy is a (more…)

Seventy people were arrested in front of the White House this morning in what marks the beginning of the largest act of civil disobedience in the history of the climate crisis. Peaceful demonstrators, including scholar and author Bill McKibben, were arrested for protesting against (more…)

I was recently invited to photograph The Aspen Institute’s Partners For a New Beginning Summit in Washington, DC. The summit brought together representatives from across the Middle East and North Africa to help promote new partnerships in the region. According to the Institute’s website, “Partners for a New Beginning (PNB) is an alliance to foster public-private partnerships that are committed to broadening and deepening (more…)

Last weekend I took part in the TEDx Conference at Concordia University in Portland, Oregon. TED is a non-profit devoted to ideas worth spreading. The acronym stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design. Though, over the last 25 years TED has come to embody a much broader scope. Leading thinkers and doers in their respective fields – from astrophysics to urban planning and spoken word poetry to (more…)

Living in a large city like New York, LA or DC has its perks: museums, films, music, lectures, public transportation.  There’s an amazing amount of human diversity crammed into a relatively small geographical space. The culinary options alone are worth the experience.  However, there’s an obvious lack of green space and available land for growing food. Asphalt, pavement, highways and overpasses, parking lots and high-rise buildings leave most of the soil compacted below an impenetrable layer of human “progress.”   In many cases, the soils that do remain are heavily contaminated with the legacy of decades of industrial activity – lead, mercury, petrochemicals, to name a few – which make eating vegetables grown there a serious health risk.

In response, a growing wave of urbanites around the country are re-assessing city spaces and growing food in the most wonderful and peculiar places.  (more…)

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The Iditarod Dog Sled race is test of human and dog endurance through one of the coldest, fiercest, and most inhospitable climates known on the planet.   During the race, temperatures along the Alaskan trail from Anchorage to Nome can plunge as low as minus 100˚F (-73˚C); teams mush through howling winds and white-out blizzard conditions.   Frostbite is a given.   Competition is fierce.

And yet, the Alaskan race admits few of the obstacles of the modern world:  no asphalt, no absent minded motorists, (more…)

For the past few years, I’ve had the great pleasure of providing photography for the Northwest Environmental Defense Center (NEDC), a legal non-profit organization working to protect the environment and natural resources of the Pacific Northwest.  Every fall, NEDC hosts a retreat at Camp Westwind – near the Cascade Head and the mouth of the Salmon River on the north Oregon Coast.

The weekend is a mix of outdoor adventure, great food, and panel discussions addressing many of the environmental challenges facing the region.  Here are a few images from their story.

by Andrew Burdick

I remember, as a child, the family Christmas tree was a big deal. We would drive to the local market where rows of freshly harvested trees leaned solemnly in the chilly December air. Picking the right tree was crucial. My father explained: look for the right height and shape, stay away from the trees that are shedding their needles. Once home, setting up the tree was a shared ritual. (more…)

This is the first time a full lunar eclipse has occurred on the winter solstice since 1638. That’s 372 years ago! The great Galileo was alive then, near the end of his life and under house-arrest by the Catholic Church who saw as threatening Galileo’s evidence in support of heliocentrism: the notion that the Earth and other planets revolved around the Sun.

This photo was made at 3:40AM EST from a rooftop in Washington, DC.

Photos and Text by Andrew Burdick

It’s 4:30AM, in the dark and chilly pre-dawn mist. A giant 18 wheel industrial dump truck lumbers its way through the streets of downtown Portland, its cargo covered by a taught black tarp stretched and tied over the enormous trailer’s steel girth. Near the middle of the Burnside Bridge, the behemoth slows and figures into an awkward k-turn like maneuver, so that the trailer sits at a slight diagonal consuming all four lanes. Inching backwards, the rig comes to a stop with the cargo bay doors in its rear hovering just inches from the bridge’s cement south side guardrail.

(more…)