Rose Garden Resident

Cover Story

Photograph courtesy of Craig Allyn Rose

Fire Photographer: Craig Allyn Rose dons his fire gear before taking photographs of firefighters in his role as the department's official fire photographer.

Hot Flashes

Teacher documents local firefighters

By Mary Gottschalk

When Craig Allyn Rose's pager starts beeping at 4 a.m., he grabs his gear and heads for the fire.

Sometimes it's a multi-alarm fire in a strip mall in San Jose. Other times, it's a fire in a home in Santa Clara. Sometimes, it's a rescue effort where firefighters are freeing someone trapped in their car following a collision with a Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority bus.

While firefighters are there to battle blazes and rescue victims, Rose is there to record their work. He wears the same protective gear firefighters do, but his fire helmet reads "photographer."

For the past two years Rose has had a dual career--fire photographer at night and on weekends and social studies instructor at Lincoln High School on weekdays.

"I have the best of both worlds," he says.

The academic world provides him a paycheck; the other does not.

The extensive work Rose does for both San Jose and Santa Clara Fire departments is strictly volunteer.

"The reimbursement I get is friendship, camaraderie and just the ability to give back to a group of folks largely unheralded," Rose says.

Fires sometimes seem to come in waves, but Rose says that between the two departments he averages two calls a week.

When he arrives at a fire, he says, "basically, I size up the scene and take a look at what's going on.

"Safety is first. I take a look at the hazards using situational awareness. I move around and try and document as much of the scene as possible."

Rose says he's never had a close call.

"I've witnessed them. The last one was a gas explosion in a house in downtown San Jose where five firefighters were injured," he says.

Rose says he's careful not to take chances, but it's not obvious from his photos. He captures amazingly close-up scenes of orange and yellow flames licking the night sky and black smoke from a fire billowing above a neighborhood during the day. Sometimes the firefighters are silhouetted against the flames. Other times their faces are clear, mirroring a variety of emotions from pensive to relief to exhaustion.

Battalion Chief John Scanlon of the Santa Clara Fire Department says, "Craig gets these jaw-dropping photos of firefighters in action that are just incredible.

"We've put some of them on the walls in our office buildings, they are of such quality. They are really, really good."

San Jose Fire Department Capt. Alberto Olmos is equally enthusiastic.

"Craig is a tremendous asset to the fire department. We use his photos for tracking purposes, for training and keeping firefighters informed," Olmos says.

"He has a passion for what he does, and we really, really appreciate his support."

Scanlon praises what he calls Rose's ability to show a sensitive side.

"He's done memorials for our own firefighters who have died. It's not just his ability to capture the excitement of a fire and the essence of what we do, but he shows the sensitive side of non-emergency things that we do, like the firefighter memorials."

Rose's love affair with film started in his pre-teens, evolving into a hobby.

When Rose and his wife, Julie, travel, he says, "It's important for me to document the experience, and the way to document is looking through my eyes. I want to use my own personal lens to show my own experience."

However, it wasn't until a few years ago that Rose thought of documenting anything beyond his own life and travels.

"There was a really large land wildfire west of Morgan Hill. I decided to go down and take a look," recalls the 40-year-old Rose.

"A public information officer with the California Department of Forestry drove by, and she toured me around the entire perimeter of the fire.

"That was it. It was sealed. It was something I felt like I had to do.

"Not just for the adrenaline rush, but to capture the work that is going on."

Rose gave the forestry service copies of his photos, which are still posted on the CDF website.

The majority of the photos on the San Jose department's own website, www.sjfd.blogspot.com, are also Rose's.

A photo Rose took of three Santa Clara firefighters "manning an attack line, trying to extinguish a garage fire" won first place in the California Professional Firefighters annual contest, and his work is featured in the 2007 California Firefighters Calendar.

When Rose's work is picked up by Bay Area newspapers, he gets a credit line but no fee.

"I might make money if a photo is used for a catalog or an advertisement for a fire equipment manufacturer," he says. "That happens maybe two or three times a year."

Rose admits, "One of my biggest dreams is to do a coffee table book that gives the contemporary history of the San Jose Fire Department and something similar with Santa Clara.

"I've got 130,000 images so far, so there's plenty of stock to go through."

Balancing his teaching and photography careers isn't difficult, Rose says.

"Teaching is my first priority. The students are at the top of my list, then comes the photo work," he says.

"The fire departments know and accept that. I don't have to be at every fire scene. They know teaching comes first for me."

Rose's entry into teaching is a recent one.

"It sounds like a cliché, but I got sort of tired of the high-tech grind. I decided to do something where I woke up in the morning and could look at myself in the mirror and say, 'Wow, you really did something good yesterday. Keep doing it.' "

Rose is candid about his own high school experiences at Oak Grove, Santa Teresa and Del Mar high schools.

"I had a rough high school career. My goal was to examine that and go back to the scene of the crime and bring some of my experience to bear and help kids who might be falling through the cracks like I did," he says.

One way Rose says he helps is, "I'm trying to empower some of the seniors to consider the fire service when they're trying to make that big decision."

He's pleased that he was able to help one Lincoln senior obtain a scholarship to study fire technology at Mission College.

Scanlon speaks for many when he says, "Craig is just there for us whenever we need him, and we love him. He's really a decent man."

Craig Allen Rose's fire photography can be seen on www.emergencyphoto.com and on www.sjfd.blogspot.com.