The extraordinary place of coincidence

The day was a dull grey when I got to the Cathedral ranges that muggy cold day in December 2008. I had been looking for a vantage point to shoot our bushland from a side view with the gums likely to be exposed and layered so virtua;;y the whole tree could be seen. It needed a valley with sides high enoughto have a descent drop. The pickings were scant but I did stumble across one valley which gave me an approximation of the image I had in mind.
Light was poor this day and I wouldn’t be back for a long time so I endeavoured to shoot what I could. The images were flat and lacked any value of  delight let alone subtlety, greys upon dusty olive with a hint of contrast.
Back home I began working on the images in post and was soon pulling out wonderful colour saturation and contrast, then suddenly, the background of the trees burst into lava, based on the real values of what was hidden in the original image, the saturated colours had turned a dormant bush scene into one filled with lava! 

I named the series “Burning Bush”.

It was a month or so later, my Burning Bush became a reality, the Cathedral Ranges where I took the photos underwent one of Victoria’s worst bushfires where the fires from the Cathedral Ranges collided with a second front coming from Kinglake where it had already consumed everything in its vast path taking over 170 lives with it.