A few days ago, the Santiago Fire (which started in Silverado Canyon or something) got a little too close for comfort. Around 7PM on Sunday, you could see the sky glowing red further down the hill. At that time, I got about 4-5 phone calls in a row asking me how close the fire was. I calmly told everyone the fire wasn’t that close, but that it seemed to have gone away. An hour or so later, a friend called back and asked me if I was sure because the fire looked really close to my house. I went outside and noticed the fire had started burning further up on the hill, closer to our community.

Anyhow, I grabbed my camera and 70-200 lens and ran outside. I was out there for about 2 hours and captured about 120 pictures. I must say that the Image Stabilization was worth its weight in gold for this situation. I didnt want to roll out there with a tripod. I messed around with the metering and exposure compensation. But capturing a bright fire in an otherwise dark neighborhood just isnt going to show that much. But here are a few of the pics that I thought cleaned up nicely. I was shooting ISO 1250 so a little bit of Noiseware Pro went a long way.

This was a close up of the fire on the hill, courtesy of 200mm + 1.6x crop

The fire as it crossed the 261 Toll Road and was making its way to Jamboree. The buildings in the foreground are the Salvation Army Church

The fire, approaching Jamboree

This was the view overlooking Pioneer Road (and Pioneer Road Park). At this point, the fire had already burned down to Jamboree. Most of the cars you see are curious on-lookers.

I submitted one of my photos to NBC4 and it made it into their slide show!

Its actually no big accomplishment, they publish every user submitted photo I think

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