Photos of the Day: California Fire and Ice

The Milky Way, shot from the White Mountains in California by Tom Lowe

 Above: Tom Lowe's photo of the Milky Way seen through a Bristlecone Pine recently won top prize in the Astronomy Photographer of the Year contest held by the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. Lowe, who  specializes in timelapse photography, said the idea of juxtaposing the ancient trees and the timeless night sky was a natural: "Seasons and weather would barely register as events over the lifetime of several thousands years," he said in a statement.

Below: National Geographic put together a set of images of the blaze set off by a gas leak in San Bruno, California on September 9. I didn't fully comprehend the hell of the scene until I saw these.

Photo by Paul Sakuma, AP

Photo by Peter DeSilva, EPA/Corbis

Photo by Jeff Chiu/AP

Fire has and I suspect always will be a staple of photojournalism, because fire is a primal fear. Here's an apt quotation I found online...it's credited to Horace:

                      "Your own property is concerned when your neighbor's house is on fire."