After a year and a half of including a ‘pic of the week’ at the end of my weekly training summary, I’ve decided to let it stand as a post of its own.  I’m also implementing a rule that the Friday Foto needs to have been taken sometime in the last week.  No recycling.  I am doing this to keep me engaged in building my photography skills, and to make me work harder to get fresh shots.  Click here to see my previous Friday Foto posts.

Right time, right place, right lens.

This scene stopped me in my tracks while descending the final 14er of what had been a five summit day.Fires are raging in Colorado right now.  This one, the Treasure Fire near Leadville, was 3 hours old at the time of this photo.  It is in extremely difficult terrain, but remains on the small end of the spectrum and is not threatening any structures.  It was burning on the opposite side of the ridge from the area we had been hiking in all day.  Timberline and some green meadows are helping to contain the fire’s north and eastern spread, while 125 fire fighters work to construct a line to set the southern perimter and get full containment.

The smoke particles and heating of the air triggered the formation of a pyrocumulus.  Literally, a fire cloud.  There are many examples of huge and dramatic thunderheads forming over large fires (and even dropping rain back on the fire in some cases).  I thought this one was unique because of it happening so soon after the fire started and while the sky was otherwise crystal clear.  Thankfully I had my 10-24mm wide angle zoom to capture it all.

Treasure Pyrocumulus
f/11, 10mm, 1/320 @ 100 ISO