The Station Fire

After several days of the giant smoke cloud looming the distance, several of my friends and I decided to explore. The day we picked happened to be when the fire was at its largest and most uncontrolled. A large portion of the area south of the Angeles National Forest was under evacuation orders. Arriving my in my car, we found a small, very steep street that allowed us to get a bit closer to the fire than most of Altadena’s streets.

I took all of these shots via tripod, but mostly guessed with composition and exposure. We were trying to move fast. Part of me felt disrespectful of the residents facing the fire at their doorstep. However, I thought the resulting photos did a good job expressing the smokiness, confusion and danger of a forest fire rising 80ft into the air and moving at speeds much faster than people can run. More shots of the fire can be found here.

The smoke cloud at 50 miles.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 16th, 2009 at 5:21 pm and is filed under Photography and tagged with black and white, Photography, station fire. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.