I know you said not to…
Exhausted Firefighter
Sooooo, I know you said not to, or at least the poll I took said not to, but I’m starting a blog anyway. This past week I took a poll on my Instagram account asking if people still read blogs, 100% of those that cared to answer, answered NO. Here’s the funny part, the amount of people that answered my poll equaled the amount of responders sending me direct messages in regards to my next post making fun of how many people viewed the poll but couldn’t take 2 seconds to read the question and hit YES or NO. Comments varied with all types of excuses or theories and they were all very interesting. The whole experiment was very interesting. So why am I making this blog? The short answer is, I’ve got stories, and too many of the stories are getting lost to the thief of age and time. So I present to you, MCP BTS which stands for Mark Christensen Photography - Behind The Scenes. Not only will I be sharing my favorite images I’ve ever made, I will also be sharing some of the funny or what I think are interesting stories behind the images, but I will also be sharing tips and details as to how I made the image and what hurdles I had to work through to get them. So without further ado, let’s dive into image number one.
EXHAUSTED FIRFIGHTER:
Three years ago today, Sunday, September 6, 2020, the Bobcat fire ignited near Cogswell Dam, nestled in the Bobcat Canyon of the San Gabriel Mountains. The fire ultimately consumed 116,000 acres and was fully contained by November 27th. Considering the proximity of the fire to my house I decided to start working on images of the fire to update people through my social media as well as submit to news agencies. My social media pages began to serve as a means for people to get information on places such as Monrovia Canyon Park and how it was fairing throughout the course of the fire. Unfortunately Monrovia Canyon Park was hit extremely hard and to this day has not reopened. During my time recording the fire I was in Monrovia Canyon Park and as I walked up the road toward the Nature Center I noticed a group of firefighters from the Mill Creek Hotshots and the Mormon Lake Hotshots having a discussion. In order to see them though, I had to look across fire demolished fencing and smoldering grass and shrubbery. At one moment one of the firefighters turned around and looked straight into my camera. It was what photographers call, the “decisive moment”. The decisive moment is the moment when everything comes together in a photograph to tell a story to perfection. It could be a look, a feeling, lighting, shadows, hundreds of different things, but when you look at it and just stop, and really look at the image, it tells you a story without any words needed. That moment is very difficult to time and often times you don’t even know that you captured it until you review your images after the shoot. For me, remembering the anniversary of some very difficult days, this is the image that I remember. This is the image that I look back on and am so thankful for the young men and women that work the fires from fire departments to hotshots, they do an often thankless job and risk so much to do it.
The man in this photograph I later found out is named Galen. I would doubt he’ll ever read this but I’d sure like to say thank you to him and his team for the work they did. They saved the Nature Center and so many houses along the fire line over those weeks. When Galen looked in my camera I saw a man who appeared tired and wanting to go home, but knowing his job had to be done and he and his team did it. Thank you Mill Creek Hotshots, Mormon Lake Hotshots, Monrovia Fire Department, Arcadia Fire Department and so many others. Galen, wherever you are, I hope you’re doing well and know that we appreciate the work that you and your fellow firefighters did.
Details:
Canon 5D Mark IV
file type: RAW
Lens: 70-200mm L IS at 120mm
ISO 400
Shooting Mode: AE
Shutter: 1/400
Aperture: f5.0
White Balance: Ambience priority
Exposure Compensation: -1
The foreground of the image has a lot to tell of the fires destruction and it ultimately adds texture to the subject as the heat waves and smoke rise in front of him. He’s not sharp on purpose. If the subject was sharp the viewer would not feel the heat that was all around us and that separated him from me. Whether or not his face was actually conveying that physical exhaustion which I read into it or not, I will most likely never know, but I did get to see how hard they were all working and that cannot be taken away from the situation the firefighters were in. Looking for human connection is so important in photography. Photographing the human condition is something that we can all relate to, pain, joy, anger, it can all be photographed and it all tells a story.
Until next time….
