Six Decades of Photography, Aviation, and Wildland Fire

Mac Tippins is an award-winning wildland-fire, landscape, wildlife, and aviation photographer from Greenville, South Carolina. Tippins grew up in Griffin, Georgia, and graduated from Georgia Tech.

​

In addition to an acclaimed  solo gallery show of his photography at the South Carolina Botanical Garden, on the campus of Clemson University, Mac is a co-recipient of a 2015 Emmy Award for a PBS documentary on a wilderness fire lookout in Arizona (produced in collaboration with Arizona Public Media).

​

Tippins works from his Bo Zarts Studio on Caesar's Head Mountain, SC, and maintains a permanent display of photography at the Chicora Alley Firehouse Gallery in Traveler's Rest, SC.

 

Geographically, his photography spans the continent: from Florida wetlands to the high desert and Cascade Range of Oregon, and; from Louisiana Cypress swamps and the Llano Estacado of West Texas to the wilderness trails of the Pacific Crest and Canadian Rockies. Most recently, his photographic works come from the 2020-22 fire seasons in the high country of the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness of central Idaho, the 2023-25 fire seasons in the St. Joe Ranger District backcountry of the Idaho Panhandle National Forest, and multiple photo shoots in Texas and Utah.

​

As a US Army fixed-wing pilot, Mac Tippins flew electronic counter-warfare missions in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. It was during that tour-of-duty in Southeast Asia over fifty years ago that Mac honed his photography skills using a 35mm Asahi Pentax SLR film camera.

​

Post-Vietnam, Tippins flew Learjets and Lockheed JetStars for a Fortune 100 corporation in Texas. He then spent nearly three decades as a pilot for a major airline in the US, retiring as an MD-80 captain. He also worked as an aviation writer and photographer, and as editor-in-chief of an international aviation trade magazine. 

​

Since retiring from airline flying, Mac Tippins has worked thirteen fire seasons with the US Forest Service as a fire lookout. That includes five fire seasons in the Deschutes National Forest of Oregon, three fire seasons in south Arizona's Coronado National Forest, two fire seasons in the Salmon-Challis National Forest of central Idaho, and, most recently, three fire seasons in the Idaho Panhandle National Forest. Tippins will return to Middle Sister fire lookout tower in the  Idaho panhandle for the 2026 fire season.

​

​