After years of encountering panhandlers while serving as a missionary in Chicago or working at the Federal Building in downtown Salt Lake City, I was still surprised at the approach I encountered in London while visiting in August of 2019. On more than one occasion, I came across panhandlers who took what I can only describe as a position of aggressive humility, on their knees, head bowed, but with their bodies jutting out into the path of passersby. I photographed one man in Chinatown who seemed like an especially effective example of this technique, which, as I recall, seemed to evoke the same response from the general public as the more traditional stances.
When I stepped out onto my front porch early one morning at the end of August 2019, I felt like a disaster movie had come to life. Up in the foothills above my hometown, the whole mountain was on fire. After establishing that proper evacuations had already taken place and that the fire-fight was in good hands, I took my camera and tripod up my street a little bit and used a few long exposures to capture the surreal vibe of the sight.
