fire

4 Steps to Taking Your Photos To The Next Level of Epic

Although my work ranges from dangling people off the edge of rooftops, to tying them down in underwater shipwrecks, to lighting them on fire—I recently discovered four steps in the process that have remained consistent year after year.

Capturing Fire Dancers Under the Milky Way, on a Deserted Island

At the beginning of this year, I started the photography trip of a lifetime, planning to travel to all 7 continents in a single trip. Currently I’m at Siargao in the Philippines, a paradise location surrounded by beautiful white sand islands.

Steel Wool Photographer Burns Down Historic 1920s Landmark

If you ever try your hand at light painting photography with burning steel wool, be extra careful with safety and legality. Just a few months after a photographer allegedly destroyed a historic shipwreck in California with his sparks, another steel wool photo shoot has burned down a historic 1920s building in a US national preserve.

This Photographer Kept Shooting As He Dangled from Burning Hotel in Dubai

One of the big stories this past New Year's Eve was the major fire that broke out at the 63-story Address Downtown Dubai hotel, which sits next to the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building.

37-year-old photojournalist Dennis Mallari was one of the many people in the hotel when the blaze started. He found himself trapped on the 48th floor, where he had planned to shoot the city's firework displays at midnight.

Long-Exposure Photos of California Wildfires at Night

For the past few wildfire seasons in Southern California, Los Angeles-based photographer Stuart Palley has taken his camera out into the hills to document the blazes at night. His long-exposure photographs show both the fury and the beauty of the fires. The resulting collection of images is now part of a series titled Terra Flamma.

Photos of a Surfer Riding a Giant Wave… While on Fire

How do go about making photos of big wave surfing even more extreme? Here's one way: add fire to the mix. Surfer Jamie O'Brien recently tackled some of the world's heaviest and dangerous waves while wearing a wetsuit that was set on fire. Photographer Tim McKenna was on hand to capture the stunt.

Cinder Blocks Are a Cheap Way to Give Your Photos Some Fire Protection

Photographer and entrepreneur Gary Fong lost his house to a devastating fire earlier this year, but he didn't lose any of his most valued possessions thanks to precautions that he took. After the experience, he realized that cinder blocks can be used as a cheap way for photographers to gain some fire protection for their data without having to shell out big bucks for commercial solutions.

Witnessing a Raging Wildfire Through the Lens of My Camera

When photographer Jim Stimson and I started our Winter in the Eastern Sierra photography workshop at Mountain Light Gallery we knew the drought conditions would provide a challenge for us to come up with “wintery” scenes for our clients.

A major storm was rolling in and much of California was under flash flood watches. We were under a high wind advisory with rain and snow to follow. A power transmitter was blown down in the strong erratic winds and soon a wildfire was raging out of control.

Photographer Documents a Melting Glacier in Africa with Lines of Fire

For his project "When I Am Laid in Earth," photographer Simon Norfolk traveled to Mount Kenya to photograph the melting away of the Lewis Glacier, the largest glacier on Africa's second tallest mountain. To capture what once was compared to what exists today, Norfolk used gasoline to create lines of fire that mark where the glacier lines once stood.

The photograph above shows where the Lewis Glacier ended in 1934.

Backwards Footage of Steel Wool Spinning is a Treat for the Eyes

Spinning some burning steel wool around on the end of a rope is popular as a way to create dazzling long exposure photographs. It can also be used for dazzling video as well.

Photographer Richie Johnston created the video above by capturing a woman spinning steel wool in a forest and then reversing the footage. It's titled "Ignition Sequences."

Bridal Photos On a Burning Couch Make a Statement About Divorce Culture

It just started as a cool idea. New Zealand photographer Tom Hollow had a broken couch he needed to get rid of, and so he decided to burn it and take pictures. Then he decided to put a bride on it because, in his words, it "would look cooler with a bride."

It wasn't until after the shoot that he realized the images fit a particular storyline quite well: divorce.

Special Printer Brings SnapChat Into the Real World, Spits Out Prints that Burst Into Flames

If Instagram is the digital version of Polaroid, then SnapChat is the digital version of those Mission Impossible messages that would self-destruct after you listened to them. Of course, one of those only exists in the movies... or we should say 'existed.'

Thanks to artist Diego Trujillo Pisanty and his project This Tape Will Self-Destruct, there is not a real-world printer that creates self-destructing photos ala. SnapChat.

Satellite Uses Infrared Photography to See Beneath California Forest Fire Smoke

DigitalGlobe really wants people to get behind their super-high res public imaging satellite, the WorldView-3, and understand just how useful it could be. To that end, they're showing off the satellite's capabilities once again, this time using the onboard infrared sensor to see beneath the smoke of a California forest fire and capture some incredibly detailed images of the inferno.

Firefighter Turned Photographer Captures Fire Ravaging Multi Million-Dollar Mansion

Now THIS is ruin porn. Forget your standard urbex photo of an old warehouse that's been abandoned for decades, natural forces taking it over inch-by-inch. The fire captured in the photos above by retired firefighter turned photographer Ricky Kulmann didn't work it inches.

It took yards (or meters if you prefer) and quickly turned a multi million-dollar home into a hollow shell of charred wood filled with expensive ashes.

4K RAW at 1000fps: Astounding Test Video Shot with the Phantom Flex4K

Typically, slow motion video translates into lower resolution -- when you're pulling hundreds upon hundreds of frames per second, the size of each of those files is a big limiting factor. Enter the Phantom Flex4K, a camera that debuted last year and can shoot RAW 4K video at a blazing-fast 1000 frames per second for 5 second bursts.

And speaking of 'blazing,' the video above was the first test footage released that showed what this amazing camera could do.

Unique Wedding Photographs Taken Inside an Ice Cave in Alaska

We promise we didn't plan it, but after sharing Josh Newton's amazing wildfire wedding photographs last month, we've managed to stumble across their antithesis today.

Last month it was wedding photos in front of a raging wildfire. This month we give you another beautifully-shot set of wedding pictures, this time taken inside a bonafide, had-to-kayak-to-get-there ice cave.

Amazon’s ‘Fire Phone’ Comes with a 13MP Camera and Unlimited Cloud Photo Storage

Today, Amazon showed us that where there’s smoke, there’s most definitely Fire. After years of rumors that Amazon was working on a phone, CEO Jeff Bezos officially unveiled Amazon’s first attempt at a smartphone at today's event.

It’s called the Amazon Fire Phone and it comes to market with a few interesting, photo-centric features that go beyond the standard camera specs.

Wedding Photos Use Wildfire as a Unique Backdrop and Go Viral

This last weekend, photographer Josh Newton created some of the most memorable wedding photos we have ever seen. Set against the backdrop of a raging wildfire, Newton's dramatic, striking photographs of April Hartley and Michael Wolber's outdoor wedding are sweeping across the Internet today at an unbelievable clip.

DigitalRev Speed Shooter: How to Capture High-Speed Photos of Fire and Water

About a month ago, the folks at DigitalRev TV launched a new series called "Speed Shooter" in which they show you how to take great high-speed shots of various subjects. We didn't get a chance to cover the first episode when it first came out, and so now that episode two has debuted we thought we'd put them together in one.

Time-Lapse Captures Just How Close of a Call Tuesday’s Mission Bay Fire Really Was

Firefighters in Mission Bay, San Francisco found themselves taking on raging five-alarm inferno on Tuesday when a $227 million apartment development caught fire. The time-lapse above shows just how close the fire came to spreading to adjacent buildings or the nearby Financial District, held off by 150 skilled firefighters putting their lives in danger.

Captivating Slow Motion Macro Footage of a Match Head Catching Fire

When we shared photographer Adam Magyar's talk in which he describes the techniques he used to capture the mesmerizing photos and footage in his portfolio, he said 'everything looks cool in slow-motion.' And even though he's probably right, we would add an Orwellian addendum to that statement: 'but some things look cooler than others.'

That's the case with this macro footage of a match head lighting on fire, which was captured at 4,000fps by Emmy Award-winning cinematographer and founder of UltraSlo, Alan Teitel.

Fire-Breathing Made Even More Epic with 24-GoPro Bullet Time Rig

With all of this talk of new cameras and new lenses and fake potential cameras, we thought it might be good to take a quick break and just share something awesome. So, courtesy of the good folks at GoPro and the sheer number of spare cameras they have lying around, we give you: fire-breathing in bullet time.

Aerial Photos Capture the Damage Left in the Wake of Colorado’s Fires and Floods

Over the course of 2013, the beautiful state of Colorado has been ravaged by many fires and, most recently, devastating flooding as well. When it comes to capturing this kind of mass-scale destruction in photographs, the best option is to take to the skies, which is exactly what aerial photographer and Colorado resident John Wark has been doing.

As wildfires and flooding took their turns on the Colorado landscape, Wark captured it all from his Husky A1, compiling all of the photos into two series titled Colorado Flood of 2013 and Colorado Wildfires.