On a long-term assignment following wildland firefighters, Max Whittaker observed them struggling against walls of flames and grinding their morning coffee.
It was almost 1 a.m., and I was struggling to stay awake. For three days, I had followed the Tallac Hotshots while they worked on containing the Yeti fire near Happy Camp, Calif., and so far, this night shift had been quiet. On the dry, steep terrain of Klamath National Forest, crew members sat around their buggies reading or playing games on their phones. Their leaders monitored the changing fire and weather conditions.
Suddenly, the call to line up crackled over the radios. I scrambled to gather my camera, headlamp and fire pack to capture photographs of the hotshots preparing, but I was too slow. In what felt like one minute, the whole crew had already lined up with chain saws shouldered and tools in hand. All I could do was follow as the hotshots set off toward a new fire line.
I spent parts of the last two fire seasons, 34 days in all, following and photographing the Tallac Hotshots, an elite unit of federal firefighters. My work appeared in an article in The Times last month. And while it was gratifying to photograph the country’s premier wildland firefighters as they stymied flames with their chain saws and hand tools, observing their down time was what I was really after.
I started covering wildfires in California 22 years ago. Most of my assignments involved marathon days and nights spent photographing the dangers posed by catastrophic fires. I usually photographed a crew of firefighters for an hour or two (sometimes, I only had minutes) before dashing to photograph another location or leaving to find the cellphone service I needed to send my pictures to editors.
During these assignments, a certain type of crew often caught my eye. Their yellow fire-resistant shirts were stained with soot, dirt and sweat. They carried heavy packs while wielding tools, chain saws and drip torches with ease. They always appeared casual while facing walls of flames. They seemed to find a very palpable satisfaction, if not joy, in their work.
I learned that these crews were known as hotshots, highly trained firefighters the forest service calls in to combat the most complex fire problems. I dreamed of following them without the pressure of deadlines and telling their stories to readers who maybe only pictured firefighters with hoses and engines.
With the help of editors at The Times, I navigated the bureaucracy of the U.S. Forest Service and found myself in Meyers, Calif., near Lake Tahoe, in May 2022, introducing myself to the Tallac (pronounced Ta-LAK) Hotshots. They politely welcomed me, and I began trailing them through two fire seasons in California and Nevada.
The 2022 and 2023 fire seasons were two of the slowest in recent American history. The younger hotshots seemed unaccustomed to fighting fires that weren’t burning down small towns, while their grizzled superintendent, Kyle Betty, referred to the year as “normal.” Normal meant the hotshots fought less noteworthy wildfires nearly nonstop from June through November.
But normal also meant that I had access to the moments that I had always wanted to photograph. Like when I saw Coriston Smith, a third-year Tallac Hotshot, dancing in the first raindrops to have fallen in months. Or when Dylan Ney, another hotshot, balanced his cellphone against a chain saw to watch the sitcom “Modern Family” during dinner. Captain Charlie Jones was serious about his pour-over coffee, meticulously grinding his beans every morning.
By late September in my second season with the crew, when it was clear that Northern California had escaped another traumatic fire season, I got a brief text message from Mr. Betty. The Tallac crew had used a helicopter to fly into the Marble Mountain Wilderness, a remote area in northwest California, to fight a 30-acre fire. My follow-up questions about their location went unanswered, but I had gathered enough information to feel confident I could find them.
From my home in the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada, I drove seven hours to the wilderness area and then hiked 16 miles before I found the crew at a beautiful mountain lake. They had already contained the Grants fire and were doing the painstaking job of mopping up, making sure the fire was completely extinguished and had no chance of jumping over their containment lines.
They joked and laughed as they worked, enjoying the cooler weather and time away from the complexity of larger wildfires. At night, they warmed themselves around a campfire and cooked Hot Pockets and Meals Ready-to-Eat (M.R.E.s) as they chatted, not at all weary of one another’s company even after spending nearly six months together.
I had missed the fire, but found what I had come for: small moments of intimate camaraderie, ones I likely wouldn’t have been able to stay for a few years earlier, if I were to witness them at all.
As the holidays are nearing, Cal Poly Humboldt’s 
