The catastrophic fire that swept through the fashionable Bel Air section of Los Angeles in 1961 left some £20 million worth of damage in its wake, a number of Hollywood stars homeless and a landscape reminiscent of a bombed city. The desolate scene was given an extra dimension by LIFE's Ralph Crane with an adroit use of flash bulbs, which he deployed to suggest an after-dark holocaust while revealing the devastation the fire left behind.
On a ridge overlooking a burned-out hillside, Crane set up two cameras: one a 4 x 5 Speed Graphic loaded with Polaroid Land black and white film to make test exposures, the other a 4 x 5 Linhof view camera, with which he made the black and white picture at right - 10 separate exposures on a single piece of Ektachrome B black and white film. Crane's two assistants, each carrying a hand-operated flash gun and a pocketful of powerful No. 22 bulbs, spread out along the rows of charred houses. They were alerted to move and to fire their flashes on signals from Crane, who blew a whistle every time he wanted them to move forward.
When they had reached a spot that the photographer wished to highlight in his photograph, he opened his lens, then blew his whistle again as a signal that the flash bulbs should be set off. (The assistants kept out of range of the camera by taking cover in the rubble.) Crane made simultaneous exposures with both cameras; when he had finished he found two unlighted areas on the Polaroid black and white print, so he sent his assistants back to those spots and made two more exposures.
Crane might have used portable electronic flashlights for his black and white picture, setting off 20 or so simultaneously in different locations, but he decided that they would produce a relatively weak flash with too narrow a beam for the effect he wanted. By using powerful flash bulbs mounted in flat reflectors, he was able to spread a great deal of light across an arc of 180°.
And with the flashes covered by red filters, each wide-sweeping burst of light created the grim illusion of an inferno still raging in the center of each house. By making 10 exposures of two seconds each, Crane provided enough light to be able to stop his lens down to f/11 for depth of field and still record the twinkling lights of Los Angeles that can be seen here in the background.