Burning Angel

When I heard last night that fires were burn­ing on Angel Island, I cursed myself for sell­ing both my 200mm zoom lens­es with­out order­ing the replace­ment 400mm lens. There being noth­ing more I could do about it at the moment, I made a deci­sion whether to run out with my 55mm zoom or to go to sleep.

My tri­pod was at the stu­dio and I was pret­ty sure that the VR lens would­n’t com­pen­sate for being the dead of night, espe­cial­ly with­out being able to get close to the fires. With the news report­ing the fire as being on the South­east of the island, I knew that with­out find­ing a boat, the walk­way on the West shore of Trea­sure Island would be my best bet, and that’s a full mile from Angel Island. So my first stop was the stu­dio to retrieve the tri­pod and strap it to my back.

On the street out­side my stu­dio, I could see flakes com­ing out of the clear sky. Not snow, but ash. The air in the City car­ried the faint odor of smoke even on Potrero Hill. I could­n’t see any­thing from the top of the hill here — the sky­scrap­ers down­town are direct­ly between here and Angel Island — but the ash and smoke indi­cat­ed there’d be some­thing to see.

On Trea­sure Island, I found I was­n’t the only one who had the idea. There were high school kids shoot­ing pic­tures with their cell­phones, a guy with a shoul­der-mount video cam­era, neigh­bors tak­ing flash snap­shots as though the flash would light up the island, and a hand­ful of pho­tog­ra­phers with tripods and SLRs. Folks were trad­ing infor­ma­tion from news reports and chat­ting as though we were watch­ing a parade. Except I don’t think I’ve ever seen as many strangers talk­ing to one anoth­er at a parade. Folks were glad to hear that the campers were (rel­a­tive­ly) safe on the oth­er side of the island and curi­ous about the one fire truck sta­tioned on the island.

I shot about four dozen pho­tos, but most of them look just like one anoth­er. I con­sid­ered rid­ing around the Bay to see what the island looked like from Tiburon, but espe­cial­ly with a lone­ly 18 – 55mm lens, the pull was­n’t all that strong. I saw the side of the island with the fire. There were some impres­sive shots on SFGate today from Tiburon and Sausal­i­to, but I got what I was after. These shots aren’t saleable as news pho­tos and noth­ing about them real­ly grabs me to make prints, but I like hav­ing a record of what hap­pens here in the Bay Area. Though I essen­tial­ly went out of my way to be a rub­ber­neck­er, I’m glad to see these things with my own eyes instead of being one of the mil­lions who saw the pic­tures on the news and went to bed.