freotech
That was nearby as a little bit of background. I did lose my home, my possessions and 90 of my hometown to a wildfire two years ago in paradise, and because of that i’ve been very fascinated with wildfires and i’ve been very interested to photograph. At least the aftermath, not so often a fire in progress, that’s pretty dangerous. So in the summer of 2020 we had a major fire in my area. Once again, it was over 30 miles away. So i was safe distance at home and then i grew up 15 miles in a matter of hours, absolutely exploded in size. So what i did is i went to my neighboring town, which was directly under the smoke column. It was out of harm’s way. I should know i did not get in a dangerous area at all it’s important to remember that, because that’s, just unless you’re like a professional in shooting, wildfire photography, that’s just a big. No, no, i decided to use portrait 400 and my hasselblad 500 cm it’s a tried and true camera for me, so i knew it wouldn’t make any mistakes with it, or at least i would hope i wouldn’t make any mistakes with it or that the camera would Have any faults, i first decided to shoot just around downtown. It was pretty quiet, as you might imagine, between coven and the fire pretty much. Everything was closed. It was a ghost town, essentially Music, Music, Music, Music, so Music, Music, Music, Music, Music.
After i was downtown. I decided to go outside the city where there was pretty much just this huge column of smoke and one side, and on the other side, you had full blue sunny 16 skies, where you just had the strongest natural contrast. I’Ve ever seen pretty much anything. That was not in direct sunlight was pitch black everything in the sunlight was as bright as a summer day: Music, Music Music. So after i finished a couple rolls, i did go home overnight. The fire grew even larger in size and in the morning we woke up to orange skies, darkness and orange skies. It was raining ash, i mean it was visible like snow on the ground and it was extremely extremely windy, which would be very, very dangerous fire conditions. I decided to go up to my hometown of paradise, which is still burnt to crisp. All the trees are pretty much burnt in black the buildings aren’t there anymore now, there’s just dirt patches, where they should be. I decided to keep my hasselblad instead of using portrait. 400, i decided to use hectar 100.. I figured a saturated film would work well under these orange conditions. In addition, i brought my nikon f3 and a roll of extra chrome 100 slide film. I pretty firmly believe that the right choice, at least in this case, was the slide film. They created the most true to life colors, this orange hue Music. The first place i went in paradise, was my old elementary school pretty much at this point.
There’S not much left of it, it got completely burnt and all you have is just the playground or what’s left of it. I thought with this orange hue, it would kind of create a pretty apocalyptic, feel and look to it. Unfortunately, it’s unfortunate in that this is where i pretty much spent all my childhood, but at the same time i wanted to take the opportunity to show people just what it was like: Music, hmm Music. After that, i just traveled around town, i went to the outskirt, where you have a few of the mountains, they’re all burnt to a crisp from the fire two years ago, and here you see them shrouded in smoke. Music, shooting in paradise has been about a two year project. For me, i haven’t taken many photos, i’m, truly, truly in love with, but at the same time i think it is important to record the history where you see the town go through a phase of complete destruction to slow cleaning up to rebuilding Music. Thanks for watching this video, i really didn’t know what i wanted to do with it. I thought it was worthwhile recording what i was shooting at the same time, i don’t want to take a light of such a serious situation like the fire that we had in september 2020, which did in fact kill 15 people and destroyed over 2 000 structures. In two small towns in my county, but still, i think as important as a photographer, to try and record this history, at least in a safe manner.
