We had already had the nationally infamous fires at Saddleworth and Winter Hill, in fact they were still smouldering when this blaze started on a Saturday afternoon. Where I go photographing birds above Meltham and Marsden I’d been able to watch the previous fires develop and take photos, in fact I’d seen lots of fires across the whole of West Yorkshire, mostly started deliberately and usually making the news the day after. I have one photo with three plumes of smoke, miles apart and up to twenty miles away.
As the afternoon wore on the plume of smoke got bigger but I didn’t bother too much about it, I thought it was way beyond Blackstone edge. On Saturday evening I drove up Buckstones above Scammonden looking for a pair of Kestrels, I realised that the fire appeared to be just over the hill towards Denshaw so I drove over. As I drove through the smoke a helicopter appeared carrying a water scoop, it looked really dramatic lit by the evening sun.
I pulled off the road, my camera had the 500mm lens on for the Kestrels so I started firing shots off. It was a beautiful hot evening and I sat on the back of my pickup in shorts and vest for around two hours until the helicopter left in fact.There were around eight fire tenders, five tractors and water bowsers, police, mountain rescue and paramedics there. I guess they didn’t want a repeat of the previous two major fires. I couldn’t get to where the helicopter was picking the water up but I was well positioned for the drop. The smoke was shifting and I couldn’t see much at times, at others the sun was turning the smoke orange, all very dramatic. Even though the helicopter was only a ghostly shape at times the images still worked.
Each time he flew to collect water I WiFi’d a few shots to my phone so that I could edit some fairly quickly. I got shots of most of the ancillary gear and the people involved, including some having a cigarette, which is a bit ironic. When I did a full edit I saw firefighters on the ground with their beaters in the smoke, that I didn’t see at the time. I edited a selection of shots that night and then on Sunday morning sent them, along with the story, to the Huddersfield Examiner and they were on the website by mid morning and a decent spread in the paper on Monday. I then had another story on the front page and page two on Tuesday- and some banter about changing my job in the coffee shop on Tuesday dinnertime.
Posted by Mark Schofield @ JB Schofield on 2018-08-14 20:38:52
#Denshaw #Moor #Fire #July
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