Nostalgia Festival by Cielos
Wow wow wow. I had the absolute privilege of attending the Nostalgia Festival by Cielos Collective, which is an organization that creates very intentional experiences to escape the day-to-day of life. The Nostalgia Festival was a weekend dedicated to the times that shaped us and a celebration of our past, present, and future selves. So it was a lot of dressing up in funky fun costumes from the eras that myself and my friends grew up in! It all took place in the high desert, just an hour outside of Ojai! It was spectacular for all kinds of activities - wellness events that focused on performance, music, fire, dance, and painting. We stayed in these lovely giant tents and had all of our meals prepped by a chef! Thankfully there was a wonderful pool that kept us nice and cool during the peak of the desert heat and we had such a blast with the see-through wall of the pool, completely goofing off and showing each other fun flips underwater among other things...
We had DJs in the day and night and everything about this weekend was just so full of laughter, chatter, and stories. Each of us brought a memento from a significant moment in our past - whether that was a photo, a scarf, or a video game controller - we brought it in to essentially share a piece of our past with each other. It was such a special way to get to know people. One guest brought his telescope and at four in the morning, we ran out to where his telescope was set up to gaze at all the stars and planets - in particular, Jupiter, and four of its moons! It was also such a fun time to take a moment to experiment with my camera by doing what's known as a "light painting" where you use any lights to "paint" the photograph as the shutter is open to take in all the light at once. It was so fun and the results are crazy cool - I was so stoked with how everything turned out!
