Where's Smokey the bear when you need him??

TGIF!!!!! been a crazy week at work. As I said earlier, there have been a pretty significant amount of woods/brush fires here as of late. This photo was taken down In the Village Of Conestoga which is a neighboring department south of mine. They had a rather large woods fire about a month ago when this photo was taken. This photo is of their brush piece, Brush 5-3. I spent about an hour on this photo in photoshop and I think it came out pretty well. What do you guys think??


Hopefully this weekend I can get out and shoot some things, that's the game plan anyway. I hope you all have a great and relaxing weekend!!

Give me your water...

This will be brief as I just got home from work and Wyatt will be up in a few hours. This is both engines from the Lancaster Township Fire Department(Lancaster Station 6-6) operating at a cornfield fire. If I remember, one engine is supplying the other. This is actually the first firecall I took photos of with my new camera. We've had quite a bit of significant woods fire down here as of late, so I may have to post a few more photos of Woods fire's this week, or structure fires.

I changed this photo up abit with photoshop. To be quite honest, I don't even recall the process I used to come out with the final look, I'm that tired. Which probably means, I should get to bed.

Hope you all are having a good week and as always, feel free to leave any comments...

Wyatt

Ok, so I guess I can't tell when it's the right time to post into the next day. Storms clouds brewing was to be the post for today, but since I posted that for Tuesday, I had to come up with a new post for today. So I choose my two favorite people, Wyatt and my wife Lisa.


Wyatt was born on April 3rd 2007. We actually adopted him and that whole process took about a year, year and a half. I was working part time over at York County 9-1-1 when I got the frantic call from Lisa that we were parents. After leaving work and making the mad dash back to Lancaster, I arrived home and found out that we were off to Christinia De to the hospital to meet Wyatt. After making the 90 minute trip and getting lost thanks to the "directions" given to us by the social worker(that's another story) We finally made it to the hospital and after getting lost in the hospital(thanks to the social worker, again another story for another time) we found where we were suppose to be and met our son.

The first photo is of my beautifull wife Lisa, my best friend in the entire world, holding our son for the first time. Talk about emotions and feelings that you experiance when you become a parent. WOW, unless If your a parent I can't even begin to describe it.


The last 3 photos were from Wyatt's first birthday party. Time does fly, I can't believe he's a year old already. He's walking and has developed into his own little personality. He can't speak yet, but I'm sure that will happen soon. The first photo was taken outside at Lisa's aunt's house where we hosted the party. He found a leaf and he had an absolute blast with that leaf. He must have played with that for at least thirty minutes. The last photo, Wyatt was trying to reach for my camera lens on my Nikon(that I had just gotten two days before on my birthday) when I took the photo.


The last year certainly has been an adventure and I look forward to many more with Wyatt, taking him to his first baseball game, first fire truck ride, first trip to the beach and many more things.


Enjoy your day today folks and please leave feedback..Don't be shy...

Storm Clouds Brewing....

Storm Clouds. I've always been fasicinated with the clouds, especially storm clouds on how unique they are and how quickly they can change. I only had time to do some contrast adjustment to the photos. I plan on trying to do a little photoshop work later this week.

The first photo was taken looking north towards Lancaster City from Lancaster County Central Park. The bottom photo was taken coming out of my mom's development. I stopped my car and hopped out quick and shot the photo. With the farm and the fields and the storm clouds forming, It kind of reminded me of the movie "Twister".

Hope you like the photos, sometimes the way they look in my head is not the way they come out...

As always, any and all feedback is appreciated...

The Tower

Hi all, hope you enjoyed the Holiday yesterday. This photo is of Roherstown Fire Company Truck 6-7 operating at a woods fire recently. I spent about an hour trying to recreate the photo to look like one of Brian Bastinelli's fire photos. Guess I still need to practice some more, but I kind of like the result I got. Feel free to leave any comments...

More Ladders

Here are a few more shots of who I consider very good truck companies. The photos were shot with my Sony Cybershot. This way before I received my SLR. Minor PhotoShop work done to them. This fire was at a third alarm In an Industrial Facility In the Fire Department Of Mount Joy's first due. If I recall, they had a fire In a rack storage unit and had a very heavy smoke condition In the structure. The bottom photo of Dauphin County Truck 88 from Middletown Fire Department Is one of my all time favorite Mack Scopes.

I will probably post one more truck tomorrow and then most likely some more photoshop work on some new photos I took and some of my son. Maybe I'll post a picture or two of a fire for Mr. Myers...

Enjoy the holiday today and have a great week

The Truck

So I decided to post on a Saturday today. This photo is of the very first truck I ever rode and caught alot of my first fires with and fell in love with being a truckie and being on the truck. The truck is a 1986 CF Mack LTI 75 FT ladder. It belonged to the Lafayette Fire Company where it was one of the busiest pieces in the area for 21 years untill Lafayette received their new ladder truck. The photo here shows the truck acting in a reserve capacity for the Rohrerstown Fire Company for a few months till they received their new ladder truck. It was kind of Ironic though, In the last several months before the truck left Lafayette and Rohrerstown, It caught more fire duty between the two departments then it did probably in the last two years. It seemed like the old girl was saying "I'm not going out without a fight, I'm not done yet" Man, I do miss that truck. If you can't tell, I am also a huge Mack fan and I am still In mourning since the day Mack decided to stop making the greatest fire truck on earth.

I think this coming week, I'll post a few more photos of truck companies at work..

The Lone Fireman

Sorry for the double post before on Thursday, I actually thought that would put it into Friday.

Anyway, so I decided to post this photo.

This was taken with a Sony Cybershot. I actually won an honarable mention in a contest with this photo.

This was taken at a general alarm fire In Lebanon County at the old Alcoa Plant back In 2006. I believe this was in South Lebanon Township. I had just finished work the night before and was still sleeping when a friend of mine who lives In York County, just outside of Red Lion called me and asked me If I was going to the fire to take photos. I inquired where the fire was at and he told me. I originally said no, thats a little far. He then told me to step outside and look north as he could see the header. So while I was on the phone with him, I walked out to my back deck of my house and looked north and sure enough, I had no problem seeing the header from my house. Now from where I live In Millersville to where this fire was at, Is about 30 miles away. I grabbed my camera and started to head to Lebanon. When I left, they had just got done striking the 5th alarm. When I arrived about 45-50 Minutes later, they were dispatching the Lebanon County General Alarm Assignment. What that means is Lebco dispatches every single company in the county for all available manpower and equipment to report to the scene.

The Firefighter in the photo is actually a good friend of mine and a coworker. He was the chauffer on the first arriving ladder truck. He told me when he turned the corner, The entire back wall where you see smoke in the photo was nothing but a wall of fire.

As I walked around the scene, I believe I counted at least 9 or 10 trucks set up on different sides along with numerous tankers, engines and other rigs..

Hope you all enjoy the holiday weekend!!

Sitting Idle...

Here is another shot of the Norfolk Southern Train waiting for it's new crew to arrive. I used photoshop to change the appearance a little bit. I applied the water color filter, then edited by using the overlay feature. I think it came out pretty well...

Normally I would not be up this late posting, However my little buddy Wyatt seems to have the sniffles which is making him a little unhappy and unable to sleep at times. I just finally got him back down a little bit ago and hoping he stays back down for the night..

I apologize for the settings, I still have not quite figured out how to make sure you don't have to scroll when you open a picture, I'm working on it though....

Fire Trucks and Trains

Well, for some reason today I can only upload one image and I even had problems getting this one uploaded. Has anyone else had any problems??

I was at home yesterday when a neighboring department was dispatched and operating at a water rescue on the Susquehanna River. I called a friend of mine from that department to see if he was on the call, he was and asked me to come down and take some photos. This is the only photo I could get uploaded. I learned something new about crews that operate trains, they can only work for 12 hours and once the 12 hour shift is up, they stop the train where it's at and Norfolk Southern sends a van out to get the crew and they leave. The train stays running untill the next crew arrives and gets the train. Where this is at though is behind about 5 houses right at a local boat launch. I don't know If I could put up with listening to a train sitting at idle for 12 hours, but I'm sure these folks are probably used to it.


Stay Safe,

Woody

More Trains

Two more images from the Railroad Today. The first is a group of trains in a secure area of the railroad museum. I stuck my camera through the fence to get the shot. The second shot I took from the top of an old control tower right along the main tracks. I played around with photoshop and did not really like the results I had, so I decided to change the colors abit. I think they turned out pretty well..


Hope everyone has a good day today...

Haunted Railroad

So I was playing around with Photoshop tonight after work with some photos I took at the Strasburg Railroad. The wife and son were away, so I thought I would go out and do some practice shots with the camera. I am still fairly new to photoshop so I thought I would see what I could do with this photo. Let me know what you think..

Thanks!

Going to the roof

I took this photo at a second alarm rowhome fire in Lititz Borough about twenty minutes north of where I live. This was the first time I used my Nikon at a night time incident. I think this turned out pretty well, What do you guys think?

Future Truckie

Hi All,

Welcome to my blog. I decided to create one to display my photographs and hopefully get feedback. I am still brand new to photography but want to learn as much as possible. I am a former volunteer firefighter, but now just do photography. I am a 911/Fire Dispatcher for a living.

Hope you enjoy the blog and let me know what you think. It is still a work in progress as I figure things out.

Untill I figure out how to add links, check out these out photography blogs/sites that I like;

Bradley Myers Photography Blog

Brian Bastinelli Photography Blog

Fire-Ground.Com

Doug Bell Photography

Shippensburg Fire Department History Blog

The first photo was taken at the Harrisburg Fire Expo with my son Wyatt. We were leaving and I saw Tower 2 sitting in the parking lot and since we were parked close to them. I decided to get a few quick shots. I was proud of my son as he was all smiles sitting next to the tower(He knows which is the best piece to be on : )