About the Image(s)

Canon 1DX , Canon 24-105@ 82mm, ISO 800 , f4.5 , 1/30th sec (Tv)

When I lived in Vail, I had the opportunity to photograph a training exercise for the Eagle Valley Fire Department in Eagle County, Colorado. The exercise consisted of firefighters putting out a series of fires sustained by various fuel sources.

The fireman portrayed is from the Gypsum Station - #14 and had been battling the blaze you can see in the background. Exacerbating the situation, just after sunset it began raining and the expression on the young firefighter’s face told the story.

Only eight photographers were invited to shoot the exercise, which included a former Obama White House photographer, so I was most fortunate.

I had no idea of the complexity involved in fighting different types of fires, from a household stove fire to burning lodgepole pines to a dumpster containing flammables - the experience wasn’t just fascinating; it was a real-world lesson. I have seven solid images and chose this one because the firefighter’s expression not only told the story but gave me the idea for the image title.

As a side bar, several months after the shoot we lost our cable TV at home, something that happened frequently in the mountains, so we called Comcast and they dispatched a tech out to troubleshoot. The ‘cable guy’ turned out to be the firefighter depicted here!

It’s a very small world when you live in Vail :-)