I took this photograph during the Porter Ranch fire of 2003 in southern California. I was standing on my driveway and using a 135mm focal length lens. I estimated the distance between my shooting position and the firestorm to be about one quarter of a mile. Minutes after I took this picture, the winds changed and they blew the fire further away from my home, making evacuation unnecessary. A few weeks ago when Southern California was again on fire, the subdivision in which I lived wasn’t so lucky. Several homes were burned because the wind was so fierce it blew embers across a wide boulevard. After this incident in 2003, I made a very clear a decision to leave California. Living in a place where people are in jeopardy every year due to the deadly combination of high winds and arsonists didn’t make sense to me. The settings for this shot were 1/60, f/4, and 400 ISO.
1 Comments
Dec 3, 2019, 11:44:40 AM
Rosemary Sheel - Hi, Jim. I remember this photo and I recalled it a month or so ago when the fires were blazing across the valley. The evacuation line was about a mile from our house. I was pulling the blinds down getting ready for bed, when I noticed the blaze and the helicopters dropping fire retardant. And I thought of you! Once again we were fortunate.