Feel The Heat: POBphotocontest Close-up

Judging by how hot my camera got perhaps I was a little too close up to this bonfire. I used a telephoto lens but I think I was a little lucky the camera didn't melt!

The flames are the event, the action the local farmers take to clear out the dead, the dried-out and the unwanted. It's all small-scale as nobody here burns a whole field of stubble any more but add all these little events together and it thickens the air. Cycling along the lanes in the evening is quite shocking to see all the lingering particles floating around and picked out so clearly by my bicycle light. It makes me feel the need to hold my breath.

The embers are the on-going reaction of the event. Almost unseen, the glowing furnace can carry on as long as it finds fuel and, in a sense, even further. The spreading result of the farmers' little ignition. Deliberate and neatly controlled at one scale, accidental and beyond reach at another. The continuation of what we started.

The ashes are what we are left with. An unpalatable world stripped of colour with its charred structural elements on display. A lifeless desert atop ground baked solid.

Fire is undoubtedly useful and so beautiful in its dynamic power. There's dancing fury in those raging flames that can hold a gaze and warm a heart. But there's such astringent greyness in what it leaves us.