Last Friday evening we had a light painting session planned in Hobart with quite a few local photographers. It was just a catch up for a bit of fun and so some could learn a few tricks. As the day wore on and the stifling heat cramped our style and a couple of bushfires got a bit worrying, so we cancelled the session. At a lose end, James from Hitman Photography and myself decided to head out anyway, check out a different location and see what kind of sunset all of this smoke would bring us. Little did we know that these fires would bring a LOT of havoc and destruction, but they would also unearth an extraordinary side of Tasmanians, that I have never seen before! The incredible generosity, help, dedication and general awesomeness that Tasmanian’s have shown in the past week has been incredible! And we have been so blessed that we have no reported fatalities as yet. Truly wonderful and amazing. Thanks to all of those out there on the front line that are fighting hard to save lives and homes.

According to the Mercury, the fires have destroyed or damaged 130 properties and burnt 110,000 hectares of land. The Forcett Fire itself covers 22,800 hectares and at one point it completely isolated the Tasman Peninsula, leaving them without power, mobile phone reception and necessary supplies. To deal with this many people from the general public mobilised their private boats and they shipped in boatloads of donated food, equipment, toiletries and other goods that were donated by the general public to assist their fellow Tasmanians. AMAZING!

There have been 300 career firefighters, 1500-2000 TFS volunteers, 100 personnel staff, 120 personnel from Forestry Tasmania, 158 staff from Parks and Wildlife Service, 75 interstate personnel and 13 personnel from New Zealand fighting these fires. Plus all of the volunteers collecting and distributing donations. It’s been an incredible effort!

If you would like to donate to the bushfire relief then you can do so at http://www.redcross.org.au/

If you or someone that you know was affected by the Hobart bushfires, particularly if you lost your home and your precious photos then I’d like to take this opportunity to inform you about a fabulous group of local photographers that are ‘giving back’ by offering free sessions and free images on a disc to those that lost their photos in the fires. It’s not much, but it is what we can do to help out. Photos are often the first thing we imagine that we will grab ‘on our way out’, it’s very sad that many have lost their precious memories. You can find this group on Facebook here: http://www.facebook.com/PhotographersGivingBack

So, without further ado here are some photos from our sunset session on Friday evening. Please note that I am not generally a landscape photographer and so don’t have the necessary equipment to get results that would be required to create images that could be printed large under these conditions. The settings used to capture a lot of these scenes (particularly the really dark ones) leave the image slightly grainy and noisy. So these images are not for sale, they are simply a way of documenting one aspect of the bushfires by showing the smoky colourful sunset it gave us on Friday. They are edited as well of course, editing landscape images is very different to editing portraits, so I a still finding my way. The sunset was beautiful to be honest, but it is such a shame that such beauty comes at the cost of such devastation.

Katinka x

Smoke from the Lake Repulse fire over Mt Wellington, Hobart

James atop a hill. See I like landscapes, but I’ll always be a portrait photographer :p

Smoke from the Lake Repulse fire over Hobart

Forcett Fire burning in the distance.