NRS592 Archives - The Stewardship Blog

Shaded Fuel breaks are more than trimming the shrubs

July 27, 2024 Michael

A video worth watching

Designing a story around defining fuel breaks was more complicated than I thought. Shooting the video was the easy part. You might overlook significant landscape fuel breaks in some areas, regions, or even major parks, as they look like lovely open spaces. Purposefully designed to have a park-like look, shaded fuel breaks are great places to hike, picnic on a hot day, or stalk wildlife. But to an advancing wildfire, shaded fuel breaks offer a challenge. The strategically managed ground vegetation, cooler soil temperatures, and higher moisture levels can slow a fire just enough for firefighters to make a stand and stop progression.

Shaded Fuel Break Explainer

For this project, I started with a broader focus on the San Vicente Redwoods area. It’s a land preserve and working forest in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The park features several informational displays about how fire affects a landscape. There was a lot to cover here. I decided to narrow my focus to the maintained shaded fuel breaks in place for the 2020 CZU Lighting Complex fire.

As a journalist and video maker, I rarely make a storyboard before discovering the elements. I have an idea of how to put together a story in general and apply those principles to gathering materials. Then, I build that into the timeline of the story arch. This one is pretty basic.

After publishing a rough cut of the video, I received great feedback on how I could make it better. Placing a direct-to-camera “stand-up” explaining what a fuel break is really brought the video together. Also, some suggested I remove the quick “nat” edit transitions. I decided to leave them in, yes a little distracting, but fancy and shiny artwork stayed in.

Shooting the video needs to be purposeful. I’m not too fond of unmotivated long shots, like zooms that only reveal a wider shot, pans that only show more of the same, or shake-filled videos. Each shot should be composed to deliver a message. That message might be part of the broader illustration, but it should be composed nonetheless.

Audio should always be there, much like in the editorial on “Audition,” the sound should be just as important to the video created as the visuals. This means the soundscape needs to be created for drones, slow motion, or another video with unusable audio.

When recording the audio, it’s important to find a nice dead area for sound. This means a place free of echoes or distracting noises like a running refrigerator. Step into your favorite padded sound booth with no distractions and all electronics off. If you can, stand up! It extends your diaphragm, and I had to wait for the neighbor’s gardener to stop using the leaf blower, but I managed. For me, my sound booth is my car.

Lastly, my editing process. I see a video editing program as an organizational tool. I’ll give you more greasy details if you request them in the comments! But take a look at this screenshot of my editing desktop.

More to come in the coming days.

**a basic editing setup, take a look at my file organization.**

Here is the script I was working from:

Motivated to do a Podcast!

July 14, 2024 Michael

This is my first nonprofessional assignment to create a story. I had no oversight, no editors, and, most importantly, I didn’t get paid a penny to generate this podcast. So, my motivation to complete it was solely generated by my fire within.

The myriad topics I could’ve chosen for my first blog post podcast were endless. Land stewardship is such a generic topic that I almost didn’t know where to begin.

However, I did have some professional tools at my disposal: iPhone 14. Others may have heard of it, but if you haven’t, it’s quite possibly one of the most easily accessible professional tools available. As mentioned in a previous blog, I showed how I use a specific application to record on my phone.

In this case, the choice was easy—low-hanging fruit, I suppose. I had a Home Ignition Zone Assessors training class coming up, and I wanted to get in the headspace of homeowners living in the intermix and the WUI.

My fellow board member, Adam Hensleigh, now president of the Fire Safe Council of Santa Cruz County, gave me a tour of his neighborhood. I didn’t know how it would go, but after 30 years of listening to radio reports and podcasts, I knew I had a lot of gathering to do.

The most critical element for me was to keep my ears open and listen to everything in the environment. Then, at some point, I needed to record those sounds so I could isolate them in the editing process.

I was also going to feature some from the training class, but the situation did not allow for a convenient recording, nor would the content be specific enough to place in as a stand-alone sound bite. I ended up pulling aside one of our trainers, who happened to also be a trained public information officer for CalFire. I had her just provide some nuts and bolts to augment what Adam had talked about on our walking tour.

In the editing phase, I had to compile and organize my sound files.

I placed natural sounds and sound effects in a folder, the interviews in another folder labeled, and then I sourced some royalty-free music to use as an intro and outro for the podcast. I wanted to make it sound as professional and polished as possible.

Both of my interviews ended up being over 25 minutes or so, and I knew I would never use all of that sound, so I listened to the interview and logged the best soundbites to use. In some cases, I slightly rearranged the placement of the sound but retained the meaning of what they were saying.

Overall, this process was very educational, even considering my history of working in the media. No matter how much you know, there is always something new to learn.

Re-design of training guides and Manuals for the NWCG training programs

June 19, 2024 Michael

In researching topics to use for the creation of a graphics project, I didn’t see a clear topic, especially for my blog page, until I was in a recent class, and it clicked. Almost every training book from the National Wildfire Coordinating Group, NWCG for short, is elementary and lacks any luster.

Here is the original NWCG guide cover and my version of the guide. The USFS has created a design that is probably as good as it needs to be and certainly saves on Ink. However, the cover photos of these module books never tell a story of the work that’s being done. In fact, the original guide cover shows a silhouette of a firefighter in heavy smoke that is not being managed well or has no relevance to the management efforts.

I decided to feature three of my original photos showing some basics. The background features a beauty shot showing the slow release of light smoke in a Redwood Grove illuminated by beams of sunlight, a fire practitioner using a drip torch controlling heat and smoke release, and a sign that shows the importance of public information, even if it’s a small effort near the unit.

The design was intentional. For the wording, I left it simple. I used the least number of words necessary to get the point across. I dropped the “NWCG” and “Guide” from the title because it’s already clear what it is and where it came from. I placed a drop shadow for additional separation of the text. I included the NWCG logo in the upper left corner, obtained from their website and used under a Copyright Fair Use legal clause, and updated the version and date in the lower left corner. I also created an obscenely large text box under the version and date because it must stand out, be obvious, and be firefighter-proof.

The photo placement is strictly based on balancing the graphic as a whole. I did not attempt to give the impression that the grass lighter was in the forest by blending the elements. I wanted them to be noticeably in different places. Additionally, the sign in the photo was from another image that looks intentionally blended to appear in the background photo, which is not the case. I placed all the images over an orange/yellow background to have some continuity of color bleeding through, as seen in the lower part of the graphic on the left of the center.

On the more technical arrangement and treatment side of the details, I created a document size that would reflect the finished size, 8.5” X 11” vertical, and set the detail to 300 pixels per inch. I gave the project that base color and changed it to one I liked. Then, I imported and embedded the photos into a new layer. For the forest picture, I adjusted it slightly to lighten and resized it, and I placed the Sunstar where I wanted it. Next, I imported and embedded the image of the igniter and set the approximate size and placement. I masked what I wanted using the magnetic lasso tool and then set it as a new layer. I repeated this process for the sign. However, the sign was shot in full shade and, when masked out, appeared very blue, and I needed to color grade that photo to match.

Adding the text and logos was a necessary evil. I wanted to make them clean and easy to read. A drop shadow on every one made them easy to read and pop out from the background.

The Importance of Imaging,

June 16, 2024 Michael

My Journey with Photoshop

Imagery is possibly the most essential part of how our species interacts with information.

Before you read the article, listen to the podcast or interact with the intellectual property someone is providing, the image presented on the header or content thumbnail is the first thing that entices you and leaves a lasting impression on your imagination.

I am currently running the tailings of an almost 30-year career as a Director of photography. I’ve had the pleasure of working with some of the most creative graphic designers in the broadcast media.

**Big lens in Big Sur, Capturing images of Bixby Bridge**

My journey with Photoshop did not start with this assignment. It actually started nearly at the program’s initial rollout in the early 1990s with the box version of the software that needed to be installed on a Power Macintosh 9500 and licensed via email. Photoshop has grown tremendously, very far beyond my comprehension. That is why I am here. These days, I exclusively use Adobe Lightroom for all photo editing needs.

I experienced many technical pivot points in my career. One was when Cannon accidentally introduced a video on their legendary 5D. This enabled photographers to become filmmakers and advance the quality and ease of filming while utilizing the benefits of depth of field and a large sensor. October 2005. The industry was again shocked in late 2013 by Sony’s introduction of the lightweight, visually powerful Sony Alpha Mirrorless cameras. Don’t worry if you don’t understand those details; they are not critical to the story.

Regarding the importance of imagery, an overproduced Photoshop image, heavily influenced by graphic design elements, is too much. Simplicity and cleanliness are far more important to delivering the message, just my own opinion. After all, I am a photographer and not a graphics designer.

However, it is OK to quickly see a visual representation of what the content will deliver for the purposes of that header, graphic, or thumbnail, which is to entice viewers, readers, and listeners.

For example, my three-panel photo is about the importance of physical fitness conditioning for prescribed fire. The key images illustrate the importance of both fitness and mental health.

Here’s a funny backstory: I directed my graphic designer to create a very similar photo on board sketch for an after-effects project. Check out the Vimeo link at about 2:35 into the video.

I shot, directed, and designed graphics for a news story for NBC News.

Photoshop was very intuitive for this project, as it is similar to using the Adobe Premiere video editing program. Terminology, workflow, and layout are familiar playgrounds.

Navigating and finding the individual tools for layering was challenging, but the video instruction was so clear that it made it livable. However, the learning curve was steep since I had not opened Photoshop in at least 15 years.

I try to avoid adding text to anything! I understand that text is important for titling or subtitling, but I try not to make a spectacle out of the text because I want people to focus on the image.

I appreciate learning how to place text on two-dimensional physical surfaces like in the crinkle paper, which is huge for me. I often ask my Graphic Designer to do precisely this, and now I will know better how to articulate that point. Again, I am a traditionalist when it comes to using text. You could say a bit, Wes Anderson. I intentionally misspelled the design to see if anybody noticed a goose egg, if you will.