Justin Majeczky, a photographer who specializes in timelapses, was at home in the Yolo County town of Woodland on Wednesday when he saw smoke to the west. He was seeing the early stages of the Wragg Fire, which has burned nearly 7,000 acres at the southeast end of Lake Berryessa.
Majeczky, 27, grabbed his timelapse equipment -- two Sony cameras and a pair of tripods -- and headed across the western edge of the Sacramento Valley toward the mountains where the fire was burning. What he captured was, well, poetic. The video, above, speaks for itself.
The images also illustrate a less poetic reality: In its early hours especially, the fire was generating large volumes of smoke and ash that caused air-quality concerns east into Winters, Davis, Sacramento and north as far as Redding.
Majeczky says he began putting timelapses together when he was 16. "I started shooting when I was 13, and then the timelapses were something fun to do," he says.