I shot this picture during the Porter Ranch fire of 2003 in Southern California just north of Los Angeles. The firestorm had just crested the hill above my house, driven by fierce winds, and my neighbors and I were just about to evacuate when the wind changed direction and blew the fire away from my subdivision. All I could think about was how to load up my car with my entire photographic collection of 35mm and 6x7cm transparencies in the time I'd have before the fire got too close. I took this picture from my driveway with my medium format film camera, the Mamiya RZ 67, and a 250mm lens (equivalent to a 135mm in the full frame digital format). The settings were unrecorded, but if I were to make an educated guess, the settings were probably 1/30 at f/4. I used a handheld exposure meter, the Sekonic L-358, on spot mode to take the reading. For me, this was the last straw living in California, and I moved to Tennessee within six months of the fire.
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