Hi all, I'm a newbie to this critique section so please let me know if I am asking the right questions or typing too much
This was a photo I took with my new D90 whilst fighting the Black Saturday fires in Victoria, Australia (7th February, 2009) as a volunteer CFA fire fighter.
For the best part of 7 hours, we had been staged at this house awaiting the arrival of the fire front which we could see over the rise. As the fire came closer, we started to consolidate the control line with burning back using the 3 fire crews and two NSW crews on the road (you can see the lights of one of the tankers in the photo). However, within seconds the ground-running fire (which we thought we had control of!!) raced up a tree and started to shower both us and the house with embers. You can see the fire fighters amazement as the trees erupted in flame (I was just as stunned from behind the camera and a few expletives might have been uttered).
My questions for this photo are:
1. Do you have any suggestions with the cropping of this photo, as I am concerned the fire fighters are not on the rule of thirds cross-overs due to placing the water tank on the bottom left cross-over. I could crop to put the fire fighters on the bottom right cross over, but that would possibly remove too much of the fireball behind the trees.
2. Is it too awkward to look at the photo given the grainy nature of it?? Apart from the lower light levels, I think I had the camera set to automatic ISO so I think it chose the highest ISO setting. Is it a good habit to set the camera to a lower ISO setting for all shots??
Your thoughts and advice will be greatly appreciated!
Dave
Exif details:
Camera: Nikon D90 (insured so it comes along with me packed in with my fire gear!!)
Lens: AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED
Date Taken - 9/02/2009
Time Taken - 3:31 AM
F-stop - f/3.5
Max Aperture - 3.6
Exposure Time - 1/13 sec.
Exposure Bias - 0 step
Focal length - 18mm (35mm focal length - 27)
Flash mode - No flash