Hi Darryl,
The first thing I think of as I look at this photograph is marshmallows! And the second thing that I think of is that it would be nice to be closer to the fire (but that could be because it is cold in my studio today).
This is a site that man has looked upon forever, or at least back to when the first cave dweller droped a cigarette behind their straw couch. As such, making such photographs is never going to be easy. Ideally you want to bring something new to this idea rather than just capturing an idea that has been about forever.
There are two ways of looking for this different idea; one is simply to look beyond the fire to see what you can include within the scene. It may have been possible to include some of the people sitting around the fire with you. To do this you might actually need to take two photographs, one exposing for the fire and the second image exposing for people's faces. With the second exposure you might need to shade the lens so the bright flames do not create too much flare in your final image.
These two photographs can then be combined later on in Photoshop.
There is another option too. I would look at how you can manipulate the flames that you have here in Photoshop to create a new aesthetic appearance that we might not normally see from this situation.
In the
photograph below I have cropped your original image and then using Photoshop
CS6 I have used the new Oil Paint filter to adjust the image. The resulting
swirls of warm tones against a black background is both graphic and rather
engaging. I think most people would guess that they are looking at flames but I
think most would also be wondering how you achieved this result.
My advice here is, give it a go
yourself and don't tell anybody about this bit of advice!
Cheers for now, Anthony.
Image Doctor's edited version
