John Keller has been around firehouses nearly his whole life, and he’s been documenting his passion for the fire service with photography for the past five years.

Keller, 17, is a senior at De La Salle Institute who posts his photos at ChicagolandFirePhotos.smugmug.com. He’s photographed members and equipment from more than 100 fire departments, mostly from the Chicago area and elsewhere in Illinois, as well as some from further away.

The site also includes photos from every firehouse in the city.

Keller said he started taking firehouse photos with his phone when he was in middle school at St. John Fisher School in Beverly.

“It was not that good,” he said. “Nothing was good. It was pictures of whatever firehouse my dad was at any given day.”

His father, Paul Keller, a truck company lieutenant, has been with the Chicago Fire Department for 25 years. Johnny Keller’s older brother followed their father into the department about five years ago, and one of his two older sisters is going through the hiring process now.

After Keller got a camera, he learned how to shoot better photos by trial and error and started his website in 2019.

The hardest part?

“I’d say definitely just learning how the camera works,” Keller said. “Making sure everything is at the right setting, right position. With a good camera, you can make night look like day and day look like night. It just depends on how you use it. People don’t want to see low-quality stuff.”

For Keller, that has meant learning how to shoot photos in a variety of situations: outdoors at fire scenes, whether during the day or at night; composing portraits of firefighters at work and at rest; and making still-life photos of equipment.

Keller said he has also learned that people want more information about the photos that they see, so he includes that when he posts.

He would advise anyone interested in starting photography to work with what they have at hand first, to figure out exactly what they want to do and what they need before spending too much money.

“My best piece of advice is start small,” Keller said. “Most modern cellphones have pretty decent cameras, and you can get apps that let you use manual settings. When you need more, get a cheap starter camera. Don’t go all into the woods yet. Get really good with really simple equipment. Then when you feel ready to get a big step up, then you can specialize, whether you want to do nature photography, or portraits, or sports. You need different things.”

Keller said he is especially proud of his collection of photos of about 2,800 fire helmets, something he hasn’t seen anyone else do.

Keller is looking forward to the day he can wear his own helmet as a firefighter rather than as an amateur photographer. He plans to start at a suburban fire academy this spring, and then seek a job in a fire department that uses part-time firefighters while he completes EMT training. Then he hopes to keeping working as a part-time firefighter at multiple departments until he turns 21 and is eligible to be hired as a full-time firefighter or until the next test to join the Chicago Fire Department.

He’ll be taking photos the whole time, he said, but that’s more of a hobby for him, while serving as a firefighter is a vocation.

“It’s a call to service,” Keller said. “It’s not just a job. It’s a calling and vocation. It’s a way that I can help people.”