Popanyinning Annual Bonfire, 2020
Back in 2015 I attended what I then called the "Almost Annual Popanyinning and Surrounds Grand Bonfire Affair" and I did a posting about that (here).
As far as I know there has been a bonfire at Popanyinning every year since, but, for various different reasons, I did not manage to get along. Until this year. This year I managed to make it to the Grand Bonfire Affair and I thought I would share some of the pictures I took.
As anyone who has tried will tell you, taking 'good' pictures of a roaring fire is not as easy as it might seem that it should be. With a roaring fire you have solid blacks going all the way through to very bright yellow/whites. That is a huge amount of dynamic range, probably in the range of 22 to 26 stops of range. Using a RAW format capture, my Sony a7r III can 'only' capture about 16 stops of range.
On top of that I needed to decide if I was going to try and freeze the flames (which requires a faster shutter speed, probably at least 1/500th) or go for that liquid flame look (then I would need a slower shutter).
I decided to try for a semi-liquid look and tried shots at 1/60th, 1/125th, and 1/250th. The shot I picked, that you see above, was the 1/250th shot. The slower shots were just too liquidy (yeah, I know, 'liquidy' is not a word).
It is difficult to judge the size of the bonfire from the picture but, to give you some idea, before the pile was lit up it was about half the size of a Transperth bus.
I am not sure about the previous year, but this year people were allowed to camp on the Popanyinning Sports ground right next to where the bonfire takes place and I think that, along with the COVID-19 virus (so people were looking for 'local' events to attend), resulted in a much bigger attendance than previous years.
So many people turned up that the gravy beef rolls ran out in the first 30 minutes of going on sale. Luckily, the good old standby of a sausage in a roll kept going longer into the night.
The band this year was the Krissy Smith Band, who I think are from Bunbury. But I could be wrong about that.
As usual, if you are using a desktop screen, click on images to see them larger and in higher resolution.