Creeping through the battle front

[PhysioDave]

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

[barabe]

I personally love the perspective and the composition of the shot. I would not change anything about it.

Please post a link to where we can see other shots you took. We already saw a few footage from those fires on tv news in Canada but nothing right on the spot like you wre.

[PhysioDave]

Originally Posted by barabe

I personally love the perspective and the composition of the shot. I would not change anything about it.

Please post a link to where we can see other shots you took. We already saw a few footage from those fires on tv news in Canada but nothing right on the spot like you wre.

I have started to upload the photo's to Flickr, but have run out of uploads for this month. I'll continue to upload them over the next few months as I have heaps

One question to the people who use flickr lots, can people look at or download these photos at full resolution or would I be better to lower the size of the photos (and subsequently the size of the upload so I can get more uploaded photos). They are all currently 4288 x 2848 pixels in size.

Have a look at a few more of the photos at:

Flickr: Physio Dave's Photostream

Feel free to add comments there too!

Dave

[navcom]

Originally Posted by PhysioDave

I have started to upload the photo's to Flickr, but have run out of uploads for this month. I'll continue to upload them over the next few months as I have heaps

One question to the people who use flickr lots, can people look at or download these photos at full resolution or would I be better to lower the size of the photos (and subsequently the size of the upload so I can get more uploaded photos). They are all currently 4288 x 2848 pixels in size.

Have a look at a few more of the photos at:

Flickr: Physio Dave's Photostream

Feel free to add comments there too!

Dave

My personal opinion is to not upload anything larger than around 600 pixels on one side into Flickr or any other online location unless you have no problem with someone stealing and selling your photos. I know some folks aren't concerned with copyright infringement but if you are, this is something to consider.

At full size, someone can easily download the picture and use it for just about anything. At 600 pixels, all they can really get is a small picture that isn't useable for anything much larger than a 5x7 or so but still allowing folks viewing them online to see the detail.

This protects your copyrights to your photos a bit more. Nothing is 100%, but this is a bit of "preventive burn".

[PhysioDave]

Thanks for the heads up navcom!! Much appreciated!!

I'll go and change a few of these photos now, so don't be surprised if there aren't many photos on the flickr website until next month.

Much appreciated again.

Dave

[Elmo]

That bright blue hot spot need a little toning down. I cannot see the fire for that light shining in my eyes.

There is a mystical art to taking night fire line pictures. I shot them for several years and then seaminly over night the changed from average to sorta good. Keep at it like all photography it is a learned art,