Hi again,
Please let me know if people don't want to see more photos on the subject of fire fighting
. Some people may still be a little anxious following Black Saturday (in Victoria, Australia). I have personally taken a million and one photos of my times on strike teams to share with the world and try to give perspective of the devastation that people endured throughout the worst fires in Australia's known history.
This photo was taken at the Whitfield fires in 2006. These fires became known as Great Divide North and Great Divide South, with over 1 million hectares burnt on both sides of the Great Dividing Range in Australia over 69 days.
All I can remember about taking this photo was I fell asleep in a standing position (resting on the water tank on the back of the tanker) a few minutes before taking it. This was taken on my second strike team* night in succession, which I thought I'd never repeat again. Basically the first night went from 5pm (Sunday) to 2pm Monday, then the second night went from 5pm (Monday) to 10am (Tuesday). I managed 1.5 hours sleep in my bed between Sunday morning and Tuesday night. The only other place for sleep was from a sitting position on the back of the truck - or standing in this case!!
I didn't have a tripod for this photo, so I used the roof of the truck cabin to stabilise the camera. Mind you, I used my knee in a lunged position to take the photo in (David & Goliath)
As much as I thought I'd never do strike team night shifts in succession again, Black Saturday this year had me out 3 nights in a row - 30 hours at work, 75+ hours on the fire line in the week following February 7th.
Again like the last photo (see David and Goliath in this critique section), this has a bit of a blow-out where the fire has taken off.
Question for this photo -
1. I've tried to crop the top of the cabin out of the photo, but it looks odd because it brings the tanker in front right to the bottom of the picture. Does it distract too much with the cabin roof along the bottom of the frame?
Like before, all comments welcome as I have already learnt a couple of things from my last post!
Dave
* Strike Team - A strike team is generally 5 fire-fighting tankers with 5 crew each that get teamed together to fight the fire. teh strike team is generally made up of people from teh same region, but "when the cow pat hits the windmill", we can end up with anybody from anywhere!
Exif
Camera: Panasonic DMC - FZ30
Lens: Leica 12X lens (non DSLR)
Date Taken - 6/12/2006
Time Taken - 10:21 PM
F-stop - f/3.2
Exposure Time - 1/8 sec.
Exposure Bias - 0 step
Focal length - 17mm
Flash mode - No flash