Pre-Editing Notes
Chris Smith: Three Days in Paradise
In 2018, the deadliest and most destructive fire in California history hit Northern California’s Butte County, killing 85, destroying 153,336 acres, and decimating 18,000 structures. The Camp Fire, as it was soon called, wiped out the town of Paradise, leaving Chris Smith and his family to flee for their lives. Like many other survivors from Paradise, they were lucky to escape in time.
I approached Chris, and in late 2025, we sat down together for our first collaborative meeting. I had been watching him and the beautiful images he was posting from across the country since the summer, and once we got together to edit some of the Paradise work, we were off to the races. The first group of images floored me, but also provided a challenge: How to show the devastation, but also some of the beauty left behind in the ashes?
I wanted to showcase what I thought was important about the fire; not just Chris’s own losses, but the scars left on the landscape, echoing the scars left on the community. For this reason, I concentrated on editing the landscape first.
Take a look below to see what I came up with, including my notes on the final edit.
Final Editing Notes
As is common, the first images produced in any photographer’s project are often thrown into a pile in no particular order, to be edited at a later time. Sometimes it can be difficult for a photographer to see the heart of the work. I don’t pretend to fully know the heart of Chris’s work, and knowing that there will be several more images to work with, I present this to you as only a taste of the images that spoke to me.
Why did I choose the lone tree out of the two he gave me? Because to me, it evoked a sense of smoky loss, still a fresh scar on the land that will take lifetimes to grow back, hiding behind in the fog, not yet ready to reemerge. These images, while quite a small sampling of his work, put me in the frame of mind that left me focusing on the loneliness of the images.
There will be many more to come, and he and I have already talked about gallery exhibitions coupled with a photo book. Chris, an Emmy-winning documentarian, will be returning to Paradise frequently to begin digging deeper into the sparse community that was left behind, as well as the stories of those who decided to return. As those images come in, we will be editing together all the different aspects of what happened to him and his community in Paradise. I look forward to viewing future work for him and helping him edit his portfolio as time goes by.
To contact Chris for photography sales or filmmaking pursuits, you can reach him at csmith@qualitydigest.com. And don’t forget to check back here for updated pieces.
