Planet Earth can provide beauty even in the process of destruction. Forest fires, while devastating to private property, brings renewal to the land as it has been doing for eons. The seeds of many plants require the heat of a fire to germinate and spring to life. I've hiked in areas, that were gorgeous because of all the blossoming wild flowers, that only a year before had been destroyed by fire. It's striking evidence of how life continues.
I was camping just north of Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument in Arizona while a forest fire was burning in the park. While taking some sky photographs with my friend Joe Orman, he noticed that the glow of the fire was visible so I set up my camera to see what it would look like in a long exposure photograph. The resulting photograph shows another form of beauty a fire can provide. The mountain in the background is Sunset Crater and the one rising toward the left is Black Mountain. The sky glow in the right side is light pollution from the city of Flagstaff.
Here's a test for those of you that are savvy in astronomy. Try to identify the constellations that made the star trails.
I took this photograph with my Canon EOS 20D digital camera with a Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM zoom lens at the 70mm position on the evening of 25 June 2005. The exposure was 300 seconds (5 minutes) at f/3.5 with the camera set to ISO 200 in RAW mode. I used Adobe Photoshop CS to perform the RAW conversion and image processing. Photograph by Rick Scott
Updated: 30 June 2005