OTHER SPECIAL FEATURES:
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 PHOTO LESSON 1 |
INTRODUCTION What are we doing to gain the fire-fighting experience that almost all of us say there is not enough of today? Our fire magazines and websites, television programs, and newspapers are carrying pictures of emergency operations more and more each day of the week. If we read the caption that usually just identifies the photographer and fire location, we get very little. Some pictures contain an informational caption written hastily by an assistant editor to make deadline. But what do we, America's firefighters, do with the picture? Do we oogle, snicker, or secretly wish that we had a chance to "be there"? Do we ridicule small tactical operations that have some flaw if the scene were to be as perfect as the red, white and blue texts written by people who rarely "know" state? Or do we say that "but for the grace of God there are we!". . . or the more important, "If this condition existed on arrival in our district what would we do or be doing? What would we do next time?" Bingo! Now you begin to learn and grow. You are no longer looking at pictures of someone else's fire! You are having a critique and you are learning. Does it matter what exactly happened before and after the scene in the photograph? No! It only matters what you identify as the problem in the picture. I remember one national example of a photograph that was criticized by a television show "talking head." An East Coast aerial ladder had collapsed at full extension with the loss of one of four victims. The critic had everything to say about placement and use of the aerial by that department. It didn't matter that the unit was a world-class truck company, that the victims had no time to remain directly above the fire apartment in an inaccessible shaft window, or that the talking head had probably zero experience on aerials and fire buildings. The real lessons were how to go about removing persons from a window (never discussed) and what to do when forced to use the aerial at that elevation and rotation and support levels. Never discussed were the fact that aerials have very little shear strength and that many other units and departments would not have even been able to raise the ladder in that position in the first place. |
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 PHOTO LESSON 10 |
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