What It’s Like To Photograph Wildfires

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What It’s Like To Photograph Wildfires

A photographer talks about the dangers and rewards of capturing firestorms.

Not many disasters, whether natural or manmade, are as viscerally powerful or visually arresting as wildfires. And unlike an earthquake, for example, which might last mere seconds, a wildfire is a slow-motion cataclysm that can rage for days or even weeks. For Getty Images photographer Justin Sullivan, covering wildfires — especially in his native California, where he has been photographing the Carr Fire — has become something of a minor obsession. Here, he talks with FOTO about what makes for a powerful fire picture; staying safe while covering firestorms; and when it’s time to put down the camera and help people in need.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images EVER-CHANGING

“I don’t consider myself a ‘fire photographer,’” Sullivan told FOTO. “But there’s a group of us in the Bay Area who end up working together on wildfires. We’re all drawn to fires for a number of reasons. For one thing, a wildfire is ever-changing. It’s not like covering a flood, where you go and shoot a week of receding waters. A fire is fluid from the get-go, and then there are pockets of time during the day, like the late afternoon, when the wind routinely picks up and things can get pretty chaotic really fast.” [Pictured: Light from his headlamp silhouettes a firefighter as he monitors a backfire lit near Clearlake, California, August 2015.]

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images WHERE THE ACTION IS

Sullivan grew up in Los Angeles but has called the Bay Area home since he was 12. Today, he lives in a small town just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. “In the 1990s I was studying to be a paramedic,” he said. “But one day I made the decision to pursue photography instead. I had been taking pictures during ‘ride-alongs’ as an EMT, and found that I enjoyed the rush of not only racing to wherever the action was, but capturing those moments, too.” In the two decades since then, Sullivan has covered more than a dozen wildfires, most of them in California, many of them among the deadliest and most destructive on record. [Pictured: Embers swirl around firefighters as they monitor a backfire while battling the King Fire in Fresh Pond, California, September 2014]

Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesHELPING HAND

Every journalist grapples with the ethics of the profession. For instance, Kevin Carter’s unsettling, Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph from South Sudan in 1993 still sparks intense debate today about whether Carter had a moral responsibility to intercede in the grim scene before him. Asked if he had ever found himself in a situation where he was compelled to put down his camera and help a person, Sullivan replied without hesitation. “Yes. During a fire that burned through Napa and Sonoma in October 2017, I came across a man running around frantically trying to save his house (above). The fire surrounded the house but, somehow, hadn’t yet reached it. A fence around the house was on fire, and I helped him knock it down and put it out so the flames wouldn’t burn deeper into his property. I am first and foremost a human being, and I’m not going to let someone’s house burn to the ground so that I can keep taking pictures. I’m just not.”

Originally published at The Room Downtown.