"Forge Fire"

This image, "Forge Fire", was one from my earlier days several years ago as well. I have the original color print, which I entered in a local fair, and won a first place and Best of Show with, and also the B&W edit of it. I like this one for its photojournalistic qualities, mostly. Like my "Gateway Arch", the edits are obvious, making for not a great image in a larger size online, but the color print that now hangs in my home (8x12) looks wonderful to me. As a kid growing up, we lived near a fire station in Bakersfield, CA, Station 4, on Bernard Street. When I was old enough to venture away from the homestead on my bicycle, I would ride up to that area in the hopes of the station getting a call and heading out, just so I could try and follow and watch the firefighters at work. Well, I didn't get to many fire scenes that way, since a 12 year old on a Schwinn has a tough time keeping up with a fire engine rushing to an emergency, but now and then there would be an incident nearby, and I'd hop on my bike and try to get to the scene to observe. Some were spectacular, like the conflagration at Monterey Street and Union Avenue when the Hopper building was in flames. Most calls were either a false alarm, or something small and mundane, But you just never knew. Yeah, maybe I was a weird kid, I liked to watch firefighters in action. It was fascinating, and exciting. Even when I grew older, if I saw billowing smoke, or more than one fire vehicle racing to a call, and I wasn't pressed for time, I might be inclined to follow in my car, just in case there was something to watch.Funny thing is, these were all before I had discovered the camera, but the kid inside me that had once wanted to be a journalist couldn't help but follow a lead if a "news story" might produce itself. I did do three years in high school, and a semester in community college, with the intention of going into journalism, because I liked to write, I liked breaking news, and I am intrinsically nosy. All the right stuff for a reporter, I suppose. I still have a driving "need to know". grass fires, office buildings that had an electrical short, whatever. I enjoyed watching firefighters doing what they do.

When I married and had kids, and we moved to the Southern Sierras, we were treated to fire dangers in varying degrees. We never lost a home, and had only a couple of close calls in 11 years, but every year, the dry California climate provided the opportunities to again see firefighting action.This was especially true up in the mountains, where the terrain was rugged, and provided little access to firefighting equipment. This new angle gave an added excitement to fire-watching: new methods of firefighting, as opposed to what I had experienced living in the Flatlands and in the city. Now there was the added drama of the aerial equipment! Over the 11 years we lived in the mountains, we had opportunity to observe helicopters with "buckets" dipping into local lakes and ponds, hovering over flames and hot spots and dumping what sometimes seemed to us like a literal "drop in the bucket" on a wildfire. Then there were the gargantuan planes that would douse larger fires with great plumes of orange fire retardant on the fires. It was quite a sight to see. On occasion, the kids and I would pack into the pickup, and drive to a safe vantage point to watch all the wildfire goings-on. (No, I never did put us into harm's way!) Once, we got to help a local pony farm evacuate an assortment of animals to a safe place. Another time, after the majority of the work was done, the firefighters invited the kids to come over and check out the helicopter on the ground, and even get in it. The kids were pretty thrilled by that one! When we moved here to Illinois from the dry tinder box that is California, our first couple of fire sightings were kind of humourous. What we once thought was someone's house going up in flames, actually turned out to be an old shed they were just burning down to get rid of. Imagine our ex-Californio surprise to find that burning things willy-nilly, whenever you felt like it, without a permit, was actually OKAY in some parts of the world!

So, this image, "Forge Fire", was one of my last fire-fascination works. It was located at the site of an old steel ball bearing forge in Greenville IL. Not sure what had actually caught fire, or how, but it was fun to once again watch firefighters going about their duty. At the time, I had thought I might offer my shots to the local paper, but I procrastinated, and this ended up on my wall and in the County Fair. I don't chase fire trucks anymore, but it doesn't mean I wouldn't stop and grab my camera again sometime, if I happened upon a similar scene. Maybe the next time, I'll actually drive my shots over to the newspaper office and do something with them.