Fire On The Mountain

Couldn't let all of you Kansas folks have all the fun! Here is what my neighborwoods in the Upper Buffalo looked like tonight....

Tim, do these state funded arsonists (can I say that) consider the location of homes and cabins in the area when they burn? They must or they would be faced with tons of litigation for burned down homes. What precautions do they take to keep the homes safe?

Actually Wayne these are your tax dollars at work - federal. It is the U.S. Forest Service. They don't generally burn where there are homes - never heard of them burning one down before. I'm sure some of them would love to burn mine down since I am such a vocal critic but log homes don't burn very well, believe it or not. I'm growing weary of yelling into the dark night about all of this so will probably quietly get on with life. It is a neat sight to behold at night for sure! As I'm about to note in the Journal (if I can ever get the server in Fayetteville back up and running agin - it is down at the moment and the folks are not open yet to fix it), this was a very slow burn with small flames - the way they are all supposed to be. I photographed this scene above for nearly two hours and the fireline only moved probably less than 100 feet - that is not always the case as I've seen them really high and wild and out of "control" before. Actually I think this was just a "preburn" around the edges - they will light a multi-thousand acre bondfire in the center of all this today I bet - that will be something to run from!

Tim, this is a really neat shot. Based on the star points, I am guessing about a 23-30 second exposure? Can you tell us what ISO you used on this one also?

I like how you can still find some beauty in these pointless fires.

I'd place my bets on ISO 3200 or 2500...

Contrary to popular opinion, stars will begin to blur at 20 seconds with a 14mm lens - any longer time or lens and you will have blurred stars. That is assuming a large print - tiny images for the web are not nearly as critical. This one was probably 20 seconds and iso 1600 or something close to that at f.2.8, probably at 24mm or perhaps a little longer. I know I could look all of that up but I have my feet propped up on the desk today and am too lazy to do any real work! I posted a couple of other images in the Journal this morning, including one I took with a 300 2.8...

Aaron the ones I shot at higher iso have a lot more stars in them but the fire was overpowering and blown out so I darkened it all down a bit with this image - and since I did this late last night after a long day and at the cabin computer and not my normal processing computer I just did a quick conversion and did not do any work with the image or blending two or three together. 3200 gets pretty noisy on the X anyway and I try to stick with 1600 if I can at 2.8...

My initial assumption was this was a fire for the purpose of burning grasses and the build up of biomass that goes along with that from years of not letting lands burn naturally. I may be wrong and maybe the feds are burning up land just to see it burn. Aaron (and I don't mean to pick on you Aaron) mention these fires as being pointless. If, and that's a big if I know when the feds are involved, these fires are for the purpose of biomass removal and the slowing down of unwanted woody shrubs and trees onto this land, then they are not pointless but a way to manage specific lands due to the unmanageable areas that should burn naturally but humans in all there glorious wisdom seem to think they should put out every fire they see anymore. Fires have been a natural phenomenon and an extremely important one at that from the beginnings of this planet and without them the plant diversity would stagnate with only specific species surviving.
The burning of lands is an interesting subject to become knowledgeable upon. Something that effects life not only in a destructive manner but very beneficial way as well.

Actually Brad that is not really the case here. Controlled burns are an effective way to do land management when they are done correctly - we used to always do them that way (I've worked for the forest service for 36 years). These days the burns are a direct result of money and nothing else. They burn because they are paid to burn and not to do anything else. A full 50% of the forest service budget is for fire - that means half of everyone's salary is paid out of the fire budget. They must spend half of their time burning or they don't get paid. Reducing the fuel load does work pretty well out west when trees that fall do not rot away for a generation or more and the fuel loads can build up, however that is not the case in this part of the country - we simply don't get a fuel buildup here since due to the climate - the wood rots away long before it has the chance to build up (just hike through one of our wilderness areas and you will see what I mean - these are not burned and have not burned in some cases for 40 or more years and there is NO FUEL BUILDUP at all). The forest service here finally admitted this farce a couple of years ago, but they were still being paid to burn so what where they going to do? The local guys came up with a new plan - and that plan now is to "return the landscape to a climax forest" by killing everything else below. Sorry, but that is bullshit, and is only double-talk to smooth over the public that has to put up with the dangerous heavy smoke they put into the air. When I worked for the forest service our controlled burns were just that - CONTROLLED - and had to only be done in very small acreages in certain weather conditions. These days there is no maximum size and we get burns in excess of 10,000 acres here every week (and often 12-14 burns a DAY), with flames reaching 20-30 feet high in winds in excess of 30mph - and when there are burn bans on everywhere. These are anything but "controlled" burns to aid the landscape. A lot of folks suffer physically from the thick smoke - sending people to the hospital all the time. They burn up all the markers and signs along the 165-mile Ozark Highlands Trail and others that our volunteers paid for and install. I could go on and on and on but will step down off of my soapbox right now and just say that "controlled" burns simply do not work the way the forest fire service is doing them in Arkansas - they are only burning because that is where the money comes from and for no other reason. Of course, that is not what you read in the papers - you can always believe what you read in the papers......These burns do make pretty good photography ops though, ey! But I would rather them spend my hard-earned tax dollars on something that does not run me out of my home and burn down my hiking trails and well, burns up millions of tax dollars here in Arkansas every year...

This is a really sweet picture. I would have never thought of trying to get stars in night shot of a fire.