The Fire Lookout Life: Coffee on a Wood Stove at 10,000 Feet

[Bo Zarts]

Last edited Wed Aug 18, 2021, 09:33 PM - Edit history (1)

Pinyon Peak - River of No Return Wilderness
Salmon-Challis National Forest, Idaho
© 2020 Bo Zarts Studios

[Enter stage left]

1. You are such a talent...

please stay safe with all these fires.

We're in Okanogan WA, there are about 200-300 fire-fighters sharing the campground with us.

Full support with laundry, food, showers, help with shelters, and so much more.

It is as well organized and efficient as any military encampment I ever saw.

These men and women are all hero's, and deserve as much respect as our military.

[2naSalit]

3. Fire Camp is usually...

A well oiled machine. Been to a few, never seen anything like it it outside of the military.

[fierywoman]

2. I love what you share with us -- thank you!

[AndyS]

4. At 10,000 feet the coffee probably wasn't too hot to drink.

[Bo Zarts]

6. Ever tried to cook rice at ten thousand feet?

I think I'll write a cookbook: High-Altitude Thermodynamics with Applied Differential Calculus for the Wilderness Chef.

[AndyS]

8. 🤣

[Blue Owl]

5. Glorious

That is, if I may say so, a DAMN fine cup of coffee

[marble falls]

7. Nice photograph. I like my coffee with a little pine smoke, too.

[3Hotdogs]

9. Not to brag on myself.. I roast my own Kona and grind it fresh for the morning.

Then I throw in fennel seed and Ceylon cinnamon.

Its a damn fine coffee I make.

But I bet the coffee in that pot, under the fire, tasted just a little bit better than mine.

[MichaelSoE]

10. I really enjoy your work. Question .. what filter/technique was utilized on the highlights?

[Bo Zarts]

11. This image was a throw-away .. seriously.

Lots of bright morning sun spilling in the lookout and on the wood stove. I cropped out the worst sun-drenched areas on the right. Doing that, I lost the very interesting stovepipe. But I had to crop the image down to something I could work with.

Then I used just the basic workflow through Lightroom, but darkening that right lower corner at every opportunity. In Photoshop I did luminosity masking and burning, and then some selective desaturation. I finished it off with some experimentation with a variety of filters in Topaz Studio 2 (Photoshop plug-in).

I overworked the flames and pine wood in the stove. Later today I will try to rework (I save almost every stage when experimenting) the last stages where I screwed up the flames. I am totally satisfied with everything else about the image, and I am confident that I can "fix" that left front "burner."

So I took it from throw-away to keeper. Maybe even a winner.

[MichaelSoE]

12. But that's just it ... not all original images are throwaway.

It's the magic in the darkroom. Half of our skills are knowing how to get the best image into the camera and the second half is how we creatively interpret that image in the darkroom.