The best part of my job as a photographer for National Geographic is meeting wonderful people along they way, like the Salt Lake Unified Authority fire crew.

On paper, the crew isn’t the elite of the elite. There are several types of firefighters on wildfires. Type one crews are called hotshots. The Salt Lake team is type two, called an initial attack handcrew, but they may as well be on top. The crew is every bit as hard working and professional as the best hotshot crews I’ve worked with.

“It’s not about the name, it’s about the job. We don’t claim to be hotshots, but we try to bring our caliber of work to that level,” says Mike DeGering, the