5/3/2003: Ohio wildfires
 

http://cellar.org/2003/ohiowildfire.jpg

MSNBC Week in pics had this beauty of wildfires in Ohio. It's the contrast between the darkest dark smoke and the very bright line of fire. And it's the residential neighborhoods only feet away. Pretty striking.

It's hard to believe that organic vegetation could cause smoke that thick and black. It looks like a tire fire.

Is that an actual photo? It might be, but to me it looks kind of photoshopped...some of the edges look way too solid, especially the lower left. Smoke doesn't usually have a hard boundry, it just kind of fades at the edges. So between that and the dark smoke, are you sure it's an actual unedited photo? It just screams fake at me (but then again, I've had times when something I was looking at with my own eyes looked completely fake too, so I don't put too much trust in that).

if your talking about the lower left on the smoke I think what you are looking at is the grass that has been burned. It kind of fooled me for a second but if you look close you can tell where the burned land ends and the smoke begins.

It's real, I watched it live on MSNBC the other day. They said that rain was predicted for later that day but they were worried about the wind that precedes the rain by an hour or more.

That's actually kind of cool since you can see the fireline ... I wonder if they are trying to set backfires, or if they are just cutting firebreaks to try to control it.

I agree with LN

Actually all they were doing is protecting the houses with water. The whole burn you see, from that light colored field in the upper left to the flames in the lower right, took way less than an hour. And that's with no wind. The area burning is a marsh/bog most of the year and has been inundated with a non-native plant, that I've forgotten the name of. Anyway they were hoping the native species that had been pushed out would comeback after the fire, so as long as it wasn't threatening houses, burn baby burn.

I shot areial photos for years. It really bugs me when photraphers can't get the horizon line level. Most of my cameras have a grid in the focus screen as a reference. It is a pretty cool picture though.

The sharp edges are shadow. Even thin smoke will cause sharp edged shadows, and the sun is from over the photographer's right shoulder in this photo.

You can see the smoke shadow on the light beige field in the upper left. From that field down to the fire you can see the edge of the burn at the tree line. There's one spot near the top of the group of houses on the left, where the bog didn't burn all the way to the tree line. It's the same color as the bog to the right of the fire.
Chrisinhuston, do you think this picture was taken with some kind of still camera? It looks like it was from the same chopper that was sending the live TV feed but it doesn't look like a screen capture. It's too clear and sharp.