For years, I've wanted to do a photoshoot in front of a burning house, but never really knew how to go about it. I'd ask around and do research, but never really found the right contacts (or, I was always told no).
I recently put my feelers out again, despite feeling that there was no hope in ever being able to coordinate this. By some stroke of luck, a longtime social media friend saw my post and told me I was welcome to come do a shoot at her fire department's burn. So, I packed up my car and took the trip to North Carolina from New Hampshire, driving 13 hours straight.
This was by far the hardest conditions to work under- the wind would blow the smoke our way and literally suffocate everyone. Sometimes the smoke made it too dark to see. It moved so quickly and had a life of its own- timing a decent photo was nearly impossible. The heat was so intense (on an already hot summer day) that I was only able to shoot for a few seconds before we had to move (or before the smoke blew back at us again).
The suit is an authentic NASA S.C.A.P.E suit made sometime around 1968 and used to be at the Kennedy Space Center (the serial number is on the inside of the suit). I recently purchased the suit and this was the first photo I did with it. No photoshop, no rendering- everything in this photo is real.
Here's the photo that I could only dream of doing many years ago in a totally different lifetime.
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