After cancellation last year because of Covid and controversy from a very misguided proposed project to take samples of peoples' blood, Dark Mofo is finally back to light up winter in the city.
I personally don't go to any or many of the artistic and musical events happening during the festival, which were sold out quickly anyway, but there are always a bunch of eye-catching installations set up around the city. Probably the biggest impact Darm Mofo has had from the perspective of a long-time Hobartian, is that it has got locals to embrace winter and it is amazing now how many people you see walking the streets at night. This year there is a Dark Downtown set up around several city blocks, and wandering through was a bit akin to walking through a magical fairy tale world, though my visit last night was relatively short.
Of course there will be and already are hundreds of photos on social media of a lot of the same iconic and eye-catching elements of Dark Mofo. In fact I probably already have a heap from previous years - the Winter Feast, the red crucixes on the docks ( though just leaning, not upside down this year), TMAG lit up red with its reflection in Constitution docks, and so many of the Tasman Bridge lit up red. So my personal challenge for this year is to find something different to capture or to capture in a different way. I would like to capture something of the feel and atmosphere of the festival, rather than just have a showcase of eye-catching installations and buildings lit up red.
On of the challenges is that my camera doesn't deal with red light all that well, and the reds tend to get overexposed relative to the other colours and I've found this really difficult to fix. Of course if you don't know what the original shade of red was, it probably isn't a bother, but in reality the reds were a darker shade that what you see in most of these photos.
But with that boring technical detail aside, my aim is to hopefully do more street photography at night rather than artistic shots with long exposures that are perfectly exposed and nice and sharp. I think there will be plenty of those around, as well as lots of nasty shots people have taken with the mobile phones in the dark !
In the last Dark Mofo I tend create a short video to music which is really just a rapid montage of the hundreds of shots I took, and hopefully it gives a bit of a feel of it, but I'd like to do something a bit better quality this time around.
Here it is for your interest :
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