Complexity distilled

‘We were coming home from the cinema. It was New Year’s Day, 2020. The sky was this really weird kind of dark orange. That was the start. The bushfires had come home to us in Canberra,’ recalled Ben Kopilow. ‘And then for the next three months Canberra had the worst air quality in the world; worse even than India or China. The air was just thick and orange. Disgusting. We lived with that for three months as the fires were all around us.’

A multi-award winning photographer, teacher and prominent member of the Canberra photographic community thanks to over a decade of involvement with the Australian Institute of Professional photographers, Ben was also the busy proprietor of Fusion Photography, a studio specialising in boutique weddings and portraiture. In January of 2020, Fusion Photography’s business was well established and successful, but the choking smoke was