Marysville and Lake Mountain – Three Years on From Black Saturday

On the 7 February 2009 Victoria was ravaged by a series of bushfires that became known as Black Saturday.  Tragically over 170 people lost there lives, while more than 7500 people were left homeless.  The fires burnt an area of over 4,500 km² (450,000 hectares, 1.1 million acres).  Two weeks ago I paid a visit to the forests around the town of Marysville (which was practically destroyed during the blaze) and the alpine ski resort Lake Mountain.  Below is a small selection of photos from my trip.

View towards Lake Mountain showing Alpine Ash skeletons.

Myrtle Beech re-growth near Marysville.

Road towards Lake Mountain summit.

Forest canopy remains near Marysville.

Alpine Ash skeleton at Lake Mountain.

Many businesses in Marysville have re-opened and Lake Mountain is also open.  Its a great area to visit with many attractions including bushwalking, day spas and restaurants.

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Breaking The Rules

Last Sunday I once again paid another visit to the Alpine National Park in Victoria.  While it’s over a 4 hour car trip each way the amazing scenery that awaits you more than makes up for the eight hours stuck in the car.  Of course the camera, tripod, and various filters came along for the trip.

Also this week Pentax Australia started their new monthly Facebook challenge – breaking the rules and coincidently dpreview.com published an article on this very topic.  As far as landscape or nature photography goes, asides from the various rules relating to composition, there are a couple of “rules” that tend to stay in mind when planning a shoot, namely always try to shoot during the hours of sunrise and sunset when the light is softest (the so-called golden hours), and what to do with all the photos when you get home; in particular go easy with Photoshop!

So since it is a 4 hour drive to get to the park and I have the flu at the moment I wasn’t too keen to head off at 1 am to catch the sunrise, and I ended up taking my photos between 10 am to 2 pm, which is generally the worst time of day.  I have also heard the light at this time referred to as pool light as the only thing it’s good for is sitting by the pool.  So since I had already broken the first rule of when to shoot I also broke the second rule (probably a guideline) and went for broke in Photoshop.

So to the photos….

This is Howitt Hut on the Howitt High Plains.

This is the first of three shots of Guy’s Hut on Bryce’s Plain.

This is Pieman’s Falls at Bryces Gorge, which at over 230m is one of the largest waterfalls in Victoria.

Except for the black and white photo which was overexposed by 1 stop and then converted to infrared, all of the ones in colours have had their colour saturation (dramatically) increased, and they have been softened as well.

While I wouldn’t make a habit of shooting or post-processing like this.  I tend to like these shots.  The colour ones in particular have, to me at least, a dream like feel to them, and given that these were taken in the middle of a bright sunny day it goes to show that sometimes it doesn’t hurt to break the rules!