The July issue of National Geographic, which will be mailed on June 16-17 to subscribers, will have a major cover story about wildland fire. They are planning a 28-page spread with many photos of wildland fire from around the country. The title of the story is “The Fire Season”, written by Neil Shea and Photographer Mark Thiessen.
According to Frank Carroll, the Planning and Public Affairs Staff Officer for the Black Hills National Forest who provided this information, it will star firefighters from across the country. We know that they shot some photos last summer in the Black Hills of South Dakota, and also at the fire in California that started east of Malibu, burned to the west and stopped where many fires are stopped, at the Pacific Ocean.
National Geographic does photo stories on wildland fire about every 10 years, but this one is supposed to be one of the best in a long time.
I think it was in 1972 that Tom Sadowski and I sent some of our fire photos and a proposal to National Geographic for something similar. We received a very nice declination letter from someone there named, and I have not forgotten this, “Smokey”. Smokey explained that they liked our photos, but that they had done a wildland fire story 3-4 years before and it was too soon to do another one.
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UPDATE July 21, 2011:
We received an update on this today from Frank Carroll:
Mark Thiessen won first place in the international Pictures Of the Year International (POYi) Awards in the magazine division, “Issue Reporting Picture Story,” for National Geographic’s “Under Fire” that you mentioned in this 2009 piece. It turned out better than we described it in your story!
