Brush(fire) with death.

Well, not really, but it was a little scary for a bit. I had my yellows on and a firefighter drove me down to where they were starting a burn out to try and hold the fire at this road. I figured they'd kick me out when they started things up, but they didn't, and despite my chauffeur assuring me that he wouldn't ditch me, he did. The wind was blowing pretty hard in the wrong direction and they were worried about it jumping this road. All of a sudden, there were big flames to my left and right and the wind was blowing all the heat and smoke right at me. I stuck to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife firefighter who said "Fuck!" at least a couple times when we had to pause for an extra thick wave of smoke and heat. I thought for a moment about what my exit strategy would be should it get worse and couldn't really figure anything out. Just after we passed where they burn out had reached, it jumped the road 15 or so feet behind us. I snapped this when it jumped again and they called in the air tanker to help keep the jump from spreading.

Dangerous Terrain

There's nothing really special about this shot except for how much effort it took for me to get it. I was led to a trail along the Spokane River where the "rapids" were, and told that I had about 20 minutes to decide which one to shoot. After I finally settling on one to head toward, I stupidly opted to scramble along the boulder-laden riverbank instead of heading back up to the trail. This was pretty tough with two big lenses (300 f/2.8 and 70-200 f/2.8). I'm not exactly in shape and navigating the rocky terrain while balancing awkward and expensive weight was pretty tiresome. Without warning, they showed up in the rapids I was heading toward and they were just a little too far for the 300, so I quickly ran/hopped along the rocks to get to a good spot for this extremely short section of "fast" water. They ended up sitting on this story for more than a week and then this photo ran about two columns.

D'oh. I guess this blog is quickly turning into me bitching about stuff. I'll try to post a positive experience next.

Dangle Dangle.

After a long and bleak wild art hunt on June 28, this came over the scanner as a "high angle rescue." I drove around Finley trying to find it for quite a while, sure that I had missed it, but found the house just as they were starting to get him down. The best part was seeing a TV news van drive right by this house. He didn't arrive until a couple minutes after they had gotten the guy down.

We already published this with all his info, but I'll spare the poor guy more Google hits of his name and his business. Long story short, he was was setting up some outdoor lighting for his friend, who lets him advertise at his meat shop. He had never set up lights that high before and was determined to learn it himself. One of his knots got stuck and he didn't want to try and free himself that high up, so they called the fire department. The chief, who used to perform mountain rescue, gave the embarrassed dangler some pointers for next time.

Triathlon

I'll continue working backwards chronologically. Here's a frame from the Richland Sprint Triathlon on June 30. I know, I know...this is pretty standard as far as triathlons go, but I'd never made this frame, so I thought I'd give it a whirl. I brought hip waders with me, but they weren't of any use because the depth went from knees to balls in four feet and then balls to armpits in another two. The head guy told me my best bet would be to stand on a dock that was 50 yards or so past the starting point. I opted to throw on my swim trunks and wade out—after tying my hair into a sassy bun, of course. Crossing those sensitive thresholds in the chilly Columbia River at 8:30 a.m. is pretty eye-opening. I picked what I thought would be a good spot, slowly inching my way along the rocky bottom, and terrified that I would slip and dunk my unprotected camera along with the Herald's $1,000+ lens. After I finally settled on a good spot, somebody yells to me, "I hope that camera's waterproof, 'cause you're gonna get run over there." I quickly moved aside, hoping that somebody would swim close enough to get a dramatic shot and I was pretty pleased to see this frame when I was able to chimp on dry land.

Then came the tough part: identifying this swimmer, who I thought was a guy until several people said, "I have no idea who she is." I went around asking pretty much everybody and keeping my eye out for girls that bore any resemblance. Finally, a woman said without hesitation, "Oh yeah. That's Robyn Paulson. She won first place overall for the women." "You have got to be effing me," I thought. "There's no way I lucked out that much." Turns out I was right in my doubts, but luckily saw this girl leaving with her family a full two hours after my I.D. hunt. After all that, it ran about three columns in black and white, buried somewhere in the sports section.

Bah.

Fireworks

I ended up working a split shift on the fourth because a coworker had a family emergency. I suspect my photo editor didn't really trust me to get a good firework shot, and seeing as how I had never shot fireworks before, I can't really blame him. We ended up tag teaming it and I'm glad he did come because he helped me find a good spot and knew a quicker way out of there to avoid the crazy traffic and to make deadline. He like this shot enough to pick it for A1 and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Note: This did happen before my last post, but after Zac Goodwin urged me to actually start blogging, I decided to put this months old Blogger account to use.

Hunting for Wild Art

I've now been an intern at the Tri-City Herald for about five weeks now. It's been great experience so far and they thankfully don't just jerk me around and send me to shitty intern-ish assignments. I do, however, get sent on a lot of wild art hunts like the staffers. Being new to the area, this is tough for me. Even tougher is the fact that I'm usually on the hunt around noontime. Aside from the fact that this is a time of inactivity in the day (though it's gotten much better since school let out), the light sucks.

With the triple-digit heat we've been having out here, I was inevitably sent out to seek some heat-related wild art. I already had a kid in the sprinkler run the day before, so I tried to find something different. The ducks and geese caught my eye, as they weren't even heading to the water—just hiding out in the shade except for a couple who I guess were working on their tan. Then I happened across a family heading out for some wakeboarding and they graciously let me tag along, so I got to throw on some shorts and hang out on a boat for an hour.

Sometimes this job really rocks.