The latest items in the news in AZ has been the forest fires that have been burning thousands of acres all over the place. Only when you have seen them close will you really know how intense and scary they are. It's frustrating for the firefighters when the wind drives the fire to devour more dry grass and trees and makes their target move faster and makes the perimeter grow larger.   It's amazing to hear a daily local newscaster indicate that a fire is '0% contained'..  

Anyway, so while being in AZ on assignment and while staying in Anthem which is close to where one of these fires was (the one called 'Gladiator') I took a ride with a friend to look at the Gladiator fire a bit closer. We still were more than 10 miles away from the fire, but we could see a huge smoke cloud that the wind had spread further all over the region. We wound up at this vantage point at dusk (my favorite time of day for shooting)  because of the nice warm light that comes from the Sun.

GladiatorFireAZ2012

And this one..

GladiatorFireAZ2012V2

And finally to mix it up (with some subjects)..  

KAL_0270 as Smart Object-1