BILLINGS — There's beauty in the beastly fires of Kyle Miller photographs. A smoldering snag spits out sparks as stars blur across the sky in a nearly hour-long nighttime exposure, eerily demonstrating how many embers a slow-burning tree emits over time. "To the eye, you could barely even tell that the tree was on fire," Miller said.
In another photo, the sky and Big Hole River are brightened by an orange glow as firefighters watch from across the stream. In the background, the Pintler Mountains seem encased in a cool, bluish-gray world entirely separate from the intense heat of the wildfire. "There's just something primal ingrained in us" when it comes to humans being fascinated by fires, Miller said.
"As long as it's not burning down houses, one of the things I feel like we have to remember is that fire is a natural part of the landscape. And for forests to be healthy, every forest has a fire regime." Miller's large 20-by30-inch metal prints, set in burned wood frames he constructed and torched in his garage, will be on display at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West's John Bunker Sands Photography Gallery in Cody, Wyoming, beginning Saturday, Oct.
26. The photos were taken by the 38-year-old captain of the Wyoming Interagency Hotshot Crew over the past 15 years. A native of Hot Springs, Montana, he grew up on a ranch and started working for the Forest Service as a seasonal employee.
While attending Montana Technological University in Butte, he hired on between semesters a.
