New Years Eve

In the spirit of posting some older photos I've taken this year, I thought I should at least post some of my favorites. On this past New Years Eve, I was at the house getting ready to have some friends over. I was just about done making my famous guacamole and we got paged to assist Piedmont with a fully involved structure fire. I threw the guacamole in the fridge and took off. I was still on medical and couldn't ride out on the engine so I grabbed my camera and followed our trucks in the chiefs command truck. When I got there, they had contained the fire and were finishing the knockdown. Our guys got assigned to salvage and overhaul on the back side of the building. They had set up some scene lights aimed at the front of the building and when I got around to our guys and saw how the scene lights were illuminating the steam and smoke from the building I knew I had something good. It took some experimenting to get the aperture and shutter right for the effect I was going for. These are some of my favorite firefighting photos I have taken to date....click to enlarge....
I love how these convey an emotion so distinct from most photos of firefighting subjects. Most of the photos I take while fighting fire are dramatic and busy. These seem peaceful, mysterious, and distant. Also, notice the crescent moon in the top of some of the photos.

It's almost hard to believe that there was a literal fight between fire and man shortly before these were taken. I take a lot of photos of the fight, but these are the first where I have been able to catch some of the emotions after the fight...the respectful acceptance of surrender from a worthy adversary.