Some images from a recent fire.

Rjcommando · Mar 4, 2012

These are 2 of several images I shot at a recycling center fire I happened to see just as the first fire truck arrived. It turned out to be a four alarm blaze. One of our local tv news stations used several of them. These two are my personal favorites.

Rjcommando · Mar 4, 2012

Ok. I have no idea why the one image posted twice. Computers are obviously not my specialty. 😄

Tony S · Mar 5, 2012

Post up some more. I enjoy watching when someone else has to hump the hose, and on a fire like this there is usually a lot of it laid on the ground to supply the master streams.

Rjcommando · Mar 5, 2012

Here's a few more images I have with me. I didn't think take some shots of all the hoses. They did have MILES of hose all over the place.

ZapoTeX · Mar 6, 2012

The moments you captured are awesome, well done!

The first one is a little underexposed I think (the whites are grey and it would be nice to see more detail in the black clouds)

The third needs a few degree clockwise rotation.

Great reportage!

Rjcommando · Mar 6, 2012

That top one I found a bit challenging. I was shooting almost straight into the sun with the smoke occasionally obscuring the sun. I shot that one five or six times with the rapidly changing conditions and actually had my hand out just out ahead of my lens to get rid of a wicked lens flare.

Rjcommando · Mar 6, 2012

Are you referring to the one with the firefighter stepping off the side of the truck? That one I felt being slightly tilted gave it a slightly "off balance" feel to it. Kind of trying to capture a bit more drama in it. This was my first time shooting a fire up close so I was kind of all over the place with my shooting. I gotta say, it was pretty exciting.

jwbryson1 · Mar 6, 2012

Work on your WB and exposure.

bazooka · Mar 6, 2012

So many fire pics posted lately, I think we should have a dedicated fire forum.

I kid, I kid.

Sorry RJ, an inside joke at your thread's expense. You caught some good action. Would you like C&C?

Rjcommando · Mar 6, 2012

Sure bazooka. C&C always welcome. I'm always looking to improve.

Rjcommando · Mar 6, 2012

jwbryson1 said:
Work on your WB and exposure.

I cheated on the WB and just set AWB. I was close enough that the lighting changed significantly with the smoke, especially on the downwind side. I did get a little sloppy with the exposure on some of the shots. I think I had sixty or so total images. A lot were just blah and not worth keeping.

Destin · Mar 6, 2012

Tony S said:
Post up some more. I enjoy watching when someone else has to hump the hose, and on a fire like this there is usually a lot of it laid on the ground to supply the master streams.

Ugh. Repacking 4 or 5 inch supply line sucks, period. Luckily, if there is alot of it to be picked up, we just call in the inmates from a local prison and have them brought out to pick everything up for us

bazooka · Mar 6, 2012

I think a few of these could be really improved by some post work. Do you shoot RAW? If jpg, you don't have nearly as much flexibility. Because you shot this during midday, you're dealing with a high dynamic range. This can be mitigated quite a bit with both some global and local brightness adjustments. For example, the 2nd to last with the black smoke... the bright building is drawing a lot of attention and lacks detail. This could be helped by creating a curve adjustment layer and masking it just to the building face. Same for the sky. Even though the smoke is black, it has highlights coming from the sun. That's where the awsomeness of the shot lies. Tone everything else down subtly to boost the impact of the smoke.

Rjcommando · Mar 6, 2012

No I didn't shoot RAW. I was on my way to go shoot around our new city hall when I happened to see the fire. I just jumped outta my car and ran over before the cops secured a very large perimeter. I definitely was a bit sloppy with my technique. I wasn't planning on doing a lot of post processing since I was going to submit them to some of our local news stations. The only real PP I did was some cropping on two and a slight color adjustment on two where the WB was horrendously off.