Description

Featured in the February 2018 issue of National Geographic Magazine "We are Watching You", this image was made in 2014 during my second season of documenting wildfire at the Shirley Fire in the Sequoia National Forest. I'd broken my foot earlier in the day and didn't get an X-ray until after the fire, hiking in the darkness with a swollen foot stuck in my fire boot, throbbing in pain with each step I took. As a result I only made a few frames because walking was difficult, and in those minutes a fire aircraft flew over the blaze to map it. It made a perfect circle orbiting, and I've never been able to make this picture again, it was serendipity and pure luck. This fire was smaller by 2022 and beyond standards, but was one of the largest fires I'd photographed until this point. Later the same summer of 2014, the Way Fire would rip through on the other side of the hill.