Holy shiznit. I guess this thing is getting a little out of control. I was just in my front yard and saw this thing, so I decided to take the camera out there. Then I hopped in the car and got behind the houses to get clearer pictures. This is from a 300mm zoom lens and I don't have a tripod, and obviously you can't use a flash from that far away.
I tried a wide shot with a flash to show the freeway and shopping center below, but it hardly came out at all. The fire is way bigger than this shot shows.
That's crazy. For a second I thought it was photoshopped or something, I don't know why. Wow, big blaze though. How did the fire start?
Keep your self & family safe and get out of there if need be... I lived in L.A. for 20+ years and I know how fast what seems to be a minor fire a few miles away become a major nightmare in no time at all...
No idea how it started. That ridge is on fire at least once a year. It's really close to a cement factory this time, though - and there's a lot of new development happening at the foot of the hill. Usually it's an out of work fire fighter setting these things and they almost always catch the guy. Fire season isn't for a while now, and with two giant fires happening I bet it's arson. We have had very little rain so far though. The good thing is it's not windy at all. Because this is a big fire area, and it's all fresh development, we live in a pretty fire safe community - my house is in the interior with four layers of houses before you hit orange groves/golf course/etc, and it's all stucco with cement-ish roofs. Between me and this fire is a freeway and two shopping centers too - the big beam light in the middle of the top two pictures is a movie theater. We're safe.
crazy enough - I was just outside and it looks very mellow right now. I expect that it's moving away from my house behind the ridge instead of towards it. Must have started on this side - or the developers did a good job of cleaning out a fire zone.
You should see the 15 pictures I trashed . I have a really long zoom lens (300mm which makes it like 450mm because of the digital thing), on a Nikon D50. No tripod meant that I had to put the camera down on something solid and prop it into the right angle with what I had nearby (in this case, 1 rock and 1 stick). I tried to just hold still, but I ended up with crazy looking pictures doing that. I'd say I'm about a mile from where the fire is in these pics, give or take. There's 4 stoplights between here and there, 1 stop sign, and a major freeway.
Wow big fire there. As long as your family is ok, then everything is good. I think those pics are from digital camera? blurrish (But who uses an analog camera nowadays?) those conventional camera still takes better and more real pics at night.
It's not just the digital - although that didn't do anything to help... The exposure had to be over 1 second long for anything to come out. That and digital has a real problem doing realistic smoke. I always get artifacts when I photograph smoke or clouds. And I had to shrink the images to 20% of their normal size, then reduce quality by 20% to make them web-viewable.
I think he's alright.... Cuz he won't stay around to get burned... But...he's staying around to take pictures... so that might be a problem..