.Mythmaker

gallery

This is not a "Fall" shot. The state of Victoria in Australia had apocalyptic Bush Fires early in 2009, hundreds of people died in areas just beyond the fringes of Melbourne. The fires were massively hot and travelling at 120+km an hour. This shot was taken a month after the fires, half way up a steep sided valley. The tree trunks in the foreground look black because they are black from the fire. The yellow and orange leaves you see are burned but not yet fallen off the tree. The sunlight was hitting my side of the valley so that added to the colour, in the background you can see blue/green foliage but that's a trick of the blue light in deep shadows, that foliage was also entirely burned dead. The fires went thru so fast they killed the leaves, basically snap dried them to a crisp, but didn't actually consume the leaves as fuel. The undergrowth was completely gone, just burnt soil at my feet. A thousand metres down the valley is the old gold mining town of Valhalla, when the fires got this close they put everyone in the old mine tunnels and hoped. The wind changed and Valhalla is still there, many other settlements were not so lucky and were completely destroyed. I loved the colours in this and I tried to take a page from Erja's book and use the strong verticals of the foreground tree trunks as a compositional element rather than an obstruction to the shot.

Enjoy.

Mikel.