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Kinglake Devastation in 3D

While I was at Kinglake for the photoshoot a couple of weeks ago, I deliberately had in mind that I wanted to take some 3D photography. I wanted to be able to present the photos of the destruction of the bushfires in a way that would have more impact, more reality, and put the viewer more into the scene and really feel like you were there. Stereophotography is a great way to do this.

What follows is a selection of 3D stereo images taken around Kinglake using the “cha-cha” method. If you are unfamiliar with the technique to see 3D images of this kind, then please read this tutorial first, before returning here. If you would like to learn how to take 3D photos yourself, then you can learn how with this tutorial.

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Kinglake: One Month After Black Saturday

Life Returns to Kinglake. Amid the destruction wrought by the bushfires, a tiny flower blooms, just one month after the flames died.

On March 8th, 2009, one month and one day after the devastating bushfires of Black Saturday engulfed much of Victoria, Australia, I was invited into the town of Kinglake to photograph the destruction.

Roadblocks were still in place to prevent sightseers and looters from entering the town, but a pass system allows residents and immediate family to enter to take care of personal business and try to begin to return to a normal life.

A friend, Erin, who’s brother Ben had lost his house, was generous enough to give me the opportunity to go with her when she visited Kinglake. These are the photos I took on that day.

Please note: All of these photos are being made available at full resolution, and under a creative commons license. My purpose in doing so is to make these images available for educational and documentary use. Please see the information on the image pages for the specifics of the license.

Kinglake CFA. On Black Saturday, the two CFA trucks were away fighting fires elsewhere when the firestorm hit Kinglake. With nowhere else to go, three hundred residents sheltered in this large tin shed for more than 12 hours while the fire raged in all directions around them.

The Destroyed Home of Ben

Kinglake Home Panorama. Above is a full spherical panorama taken from within the ruins of Ben’s house in Kinglake. To preserve detail, this panorama is larger than most I have shown you before, so please give it a little time to complete loading.

Nothing Left. CFA volunteer Ben stands in the ruins of what was once his home. Everything has been destroyed, but he and his family survived, while so many others did not.

Ben’s X-Box. Ben pulls his X-Box from the ruins of his home. Someone has already given him a new X-Box 360.

Child’s Trike. Ben’s five year old daughter’s trike stands destroyed in what was once the garden shed.

Exploded Fire Extinguisher. The heat of the fire was so great that it caused the pressure to build inside this fire extinguisher until it could no longer stay together. The side of the extinguisher was peeled back in a great explosion.

Melted Swing. A child’s swing survives the bushfire with relatively minor damage, while the house just meters behind lies in ruins.

Tragic Loss. When he returned to his property, Ben’s neighbours were missing. He looked in their cars to see if they were inside, but couldn’t find anyone there. The police later searched the cars, and found two bodies in the car to the left. The utter destruction of the fire left nothing that the untrained eye could discern as a human body.

The blue police tape here indicates that human remains were found on the scene. The yellow tape is to keep others out while the scene is investigated.

Marking the Loss. A bouquet of flowers and a small teddy bear marks the spot where two children and their grandmother died.

Their father had evacuated the children to their grandmothers, where he thought they would be safer from the bushfire. He stayed and defended the family home, which survived.

Petrol Station Destroyed. In the heart of Kinglake, less than 300m from where hundreds of residents were sheltering from the fire, the town’s petrol station was engulfed by flame.

A View of Death. What was once a spectacular mountain forest view is now nothing but destruction as far as they eye can see. Almost half a million hectares (nearly 2000 square miles) were destroyed by the bushfires in Victoria in February 2009.

Never Give Up. The local church was utterly destroyed, but when locals found the burned and bent flag pole in the wreckage, they erected it once again, exactly in the state they found it, and raised the Australian flag.

The flag has become a symbol of solidarity and determination for the town, and everywhere you go, you see it flying proudly.

You can see the full set of fifty four Kinglake photos in my flickr set.

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I want to express my sincere gratitude to Erin and her Mother, who took Naomi and I into Kinglake, and to Ben for allowing me to photograph him and his property, but most of all for selflessly risking his life to protect the property and lives of others. Ben and people like him, the volunteer firefighters, are true heroes.

During our visit, we delivered the fine art print and proceeds from the fundraising auction I conducted last week. Another post with more information will follow shortly.

Creative Video – Sushi Conveyor

I found this brilliant video online today at http://dannychoo.com. I think it brilliantly shows how you can do interesting, creative photography and video with simple camera equipment. Just try and watch this one without smiling!

I don’t know what camera was used, but just about any camera available today would have done the job. From what I understand, the girl asked for permission before she sent her camera on the trip around the sushi restaurant on the conveyor belt. I suppose she was lucky that the camera returned to her, but the results she got were not only amusing, but also incredibly interesting. The diversity of faces, the different reactions, the slice of life shown are exactly the kind of things that make for great photography.

So what simple, clever ideas can you come up with to get creative with photography?

New Site Goes Live and First Flyer Revealed

I made a life decision a few weeks ago – I want to be a photographer. That may sound obvious to readers of this blog, but for years I have been a web developer who takes photographs. Now I have decided that I’ve had enough of web development, and I’m going to focus my attention on making a living from my photography. Of course, if the right web job comes along for the right money, I won’t turn it down. But this decision was all about changing how I saw myself.

Since making this decision I have been working hard to make it a reality. I have done a complete overhaul of my web site ( http://neil.creek.name ) which had only ever been a half-hearted effort, and have started brainstorming ideas to find work. One of those ideas has come from friends and family who have recently had children. They have often said “We love the photos you take of our children, and I’m sure you could sell your services to other parents we know.” With that thought in mind, Naomi and I have worked on creating my first promotional flyer.

New Web Site

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The new web site is built around a collection of six subject-specific folios of my work. Along with the collections of photos, for the first time I am promoting my services as a photographer for hire, with actual prices, and the facility to submit a quote request. The six folios on show at the moment are: portraits, nature, weddings, costuming, commercial and special effects. I may add other sections in the future, the next one to be added will probably be panoramic photography.

Writing marketing copy has never been something I enjoy, and I find it difficult to try to convince people to part with their money. However I am confident in my skills as a photographer, so I don’t feel that I am offering something that isn’t worth what I am asking.

I have received a lot of help with the site redevelopment, most importantly and most effectively from my darling wife Naomi. She has supported and encouraged me every step of the way, and that has helped me more than anything. The Twitter community have also helped me in various ways for which I am grateful. I am especially grateful to Glenn Murray (twitter: @divinewrite web: http://www.divinewrite.com) for the detailed thoughts he offered on both the “voice” of the copy and on making the site search-friendly. I still have some work to do on the site to polish it up and complete Glenn’s suggestions, but that should be completed in a week or two.

Please take the time to have a look through my new site. Enjoy the folios, send the link to friends, and please consider me if you live near Melbourne, Australia and are in need of a photographer.

Family Photos Flyer

This is the first tangible result of my new self-promotional push. This flyer design will soon be printed and handed in large bundles to everyone we know who knows people with families. Hopefully when the word gets out, the work will come in. I plan to do other flyers in the future, especially for weddings, but I’ll see how this one goes first, and learn from any mistakes we make this time around.

Feel free to download the PDF of the flyer yourself and print it off for yourself or friends, if you know someone who might be interested in my services! Who knows, I might even be able to think of some kind of referrer bonus or something. It’s early days!

Naomi’s Life With Arthritis – A Long Term Project

naomiHome alone last night, I was watching the exceptional BBC series “The Genius of Photography“, when I was struck by inspiration. I have felt that I have been lacking a direction in my photography. Suddenly it occurred to me, that I have been ignoring a very important subject, my wife.

Naomi is an exceptional and inspirational person, who has suffered most of her life with the debilitating disease, Juvenile Onset Rheumatoid Arthritis, never more than now. She is currently in hospital, fighting an infection of her prosthetic knee, a complication of the treatment of her disease. With this recent issue, the interest and concern from family and friends has been great, and it has reminded me to varying degrees how little most people understand the disease, and more importantly, what it is like to live with it.

Our family and friends, in particular, generally have a good understanding of what Naomi is going through, but that only goes so far. The general public understands even less. I feel that many people have a poor appreciation of what it is like to experience life with a debilitating chronic disease.

A New Project

I intend to photograph Naomi, and expose what her life is like, living with arthritis. I want to take a journalistic and documentary style, something which I have never really done before. I want to show Naomi’s life as it is, conveying the reality and emotion as clearly as possible. It won’t be art, and it probably won’t be pretty, and I apologise to Naomi in advance if the photos show her in a less than flattering light. However I firmly believe that an unfettered, unfiltered view of this disease is essential. She has given me her consent to undertake this project.

This will be a learning experience for me, and to an extent, I will be exposing myself and my life’s experiences through these photos as well. I will never be able to be truly objective and removed from the subject in the true journalistic sense, as I am very much a part of Naomi’s life, and her disease affects me as well in many ways. I expect this to be a difficult and emotional experience for us both.

I hope that you will find this project interesting and informative, and hopefully I will be able to convey what I think is the most important thing about Naomi’s life with arthritis: the hope and determination this inspirational girl shows every single day of her life.

24th Day in Hospital

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Naomi has surrounded herself with various bits and pieces to make life in hospital more comfortable, and to pass the time creatively and productively.

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A PICC line enters Naomi through her arm and via a vein leads directly inside her heart, allowing for the delivery of antibiotics to fight the infection in her knee.

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Naomi passes the time creatively, by working on a beaded bracelet of her own design.

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Despite the damage to her finger joints, and the swelling and pain that results, Naomi has been able to stay relatively nimble and doesn’t find her beading hobby very restricted by the damage to her hands.

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A nurse administers a dose of intravenous antibiotics, which take from three to five hours to be fed via the PICC line into Naomi’s body. During this time she is tethered to the pump, and must take it with her if she needs to leave bed for any reason.

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Bandages cover an approximately 20cm long wound where Naomi’s knee was opened in surgery to “flush” the joint of infection. The bacteria are able to attach themselves to the prosthetic joint and potentially avoid the antibiotics, leaving a lingering question of how effective the treatment will eventually prove.

For those who are following the saga, the latest news is somewhat mixed. Naomi was expected to be discharged on Monday, to be treated for the next six weeks via “Hospital in the Home” with daily home visits by nursing staff. Unfortunately a test of a key marker for infection (CRP for the medically inclined) just hours before she was planning to leave showed the marker level to have jumped from 15 to 158! This concerned but did not alarm the doctors, but then could not let her go home.

This morning, a follow up test of the same marker showed a minimal decrease to 157, not any better, but no worse either. Naomi suggested that the marker – which indicates inflammation, a typical by-product of infection – may have gone up due to the worsening of her arthritis as a result of needing to come off the drug trial, which she has been on for three years. Her specialist, however, does not believe this is the cause, unfortunately pointing the finger of suspicion back to the infection.

Again the doctors are concerned but not alarmed. This is mostly because Naomi appears otherwise to be in good health, not showing other symptoms one might expect from a bad infection, such as fevers or nausea. For the time being they want to keep her in hospital for observation to see what happens to the CRP levels. They have also given her a moderate increase in her dose of antibiotics.

So for now it’s a waiting game.

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