Fire

I have some more traditional photos to show you along with more tutorials a little later on. It's time to take a walk on the wild side though. You eye-candy junkies can skip the intro and check out these wild shots.

For those of you who want the "rest of the story", here's the deal. A friend of mine, Linette, took this shot on the movie set of "In Broad Daylight". I was the arsonist in the film that set this inferno in motion. Actually I only threw the torch that signaled "The Whiz Kids" (the pyrotechnics technicians) to push the plunger. As I recall, the plunger was connected to 4 small charges in the house and each charge had 5 gallons of gasoline sitting in a trash bag on top of it. That's 20 gallons total. In addition, 5 or 10 gallons of gas was poured throughout the house. Now I have to tell you, standing 20 feet away from this space bound heap of reeking gasoline in the dead of night with a 20 MPH wind at your face and a TORCH in your hand, would have a chimpanzee singing "Nearer My God to Thee". Let's just say I was a little nervous and the conditions didn't help AT ALL. "That's what editing is for", I would contend for quite some time. Anyway, Linette shot this sequence after I had dove into the back of a waiting truck and disappeared in the shadows. She gave me these photos (including the negatives) to reminisce.

Shot with a simple "point and shoot" 35MM camera. This would equate to the auto setting on a manual focus camera or shooting at the settings according to the camera's judgement.

Note the ladder and spotlight used by the production. Setting the exposure 1 or 2 steps slower would have shown the front of the house, which was illuminated by the light. The light reading from the blaze was simply much brighter than the spotlight.

Here is the final shot roughly 10 minutes after ignition. Anyhoo, thanks Linette. I guess I should print a disclaimer of some kind so here goes.

Do not try this at home. Trained professionals performed this sequence. Igniting 30 gallons, more or less, of gasoline, will result in a catastrophic blaze.

Seriously, a single drop of gasoline is very dangerous. Don't play with flammable liquids.

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