Farmers of Samar Photo

Photographer’s Note

This photo was taken 8 years ago on a late afternoon when I was working on the process of mapping the boundaries of the Samar Island Natural Park taken with a first generation Kodak digital camera so this is the more or less the actual size and quality of the image with some brightness and contrast adjustments.

Samar Island is one of the largest islands of the Philippines in the eastern part of the archipelago. It is the region mostly affected and devastated by tropical storms coming from the western side of the pacific ocean, thus the economic development here is relatively slow. This is also the area where the portuguese seafarer Ferdinand Magellan's ships landed in search of the precious spices in the 16th century as documented by Pigaffetta.

The photo shows three farmers belonging to one family at the ricefields, resting for a couple of minutes. In this part of the province, the harvest purely with bare hands and sickle, the rice grain is collected by hitting the rice weeds against a spanned net bundle by bundle filtering the grains. All the able adults are engaged during harvest time. The children, as young as five, help their parents in sperating the grains from the weed.

To get here from the nearest city, we needed four hours changing modes of transportation from tricycle, jeepney, rented a motor-powered boat and the local tricycle called 'Kuliglig', meaning cricket, because the sound of motor sounded like one.

Jicontol, Dolores, Eastern Samar, rice bowl of Samar and the Visayas.

Benedict, Henryk_Bilor, pticaruh, zmey, ekinokswest has marked this note useful

Critiques | Translate

wolf38 (13159) 2008-08-14 4:43

Hello Alex. The motive is wonderful. Just as the composition is outstanding. However the technical quality of the photo could be somewhat better. The alive and photo worth seeing pleases me very well. Best regards, Wolfgang.

trekks (14336) 2008-08-16 9:12

hi Alex

Superb composition of this rice field and the farmers. Really very nice view in bright light.

tfs, bill

Flavia (10202) 2008-08-17 5:51

Hi Alex,

Excellent composition with great use of diagonals. The tree farmer are well placed in the fg and you have a nice contrasting sky which completes well the scene. A little noisy.

Regards,

Flavia

Henryk_Bilor (20375) 2008-08-18 12:11

Hi Alex
Interesting capture of these farmers taking a while of relax. Lovely place and light.
Regards

pticaruh (276) 2008-08-18 13:39

NIce composition, impressive diagonal of unharvested rice.

You say you have been mapping - are you a surveyor? I have been working in fields like this as a surveyor...

Regards,

Asparuh

KateinDenmark (1128) 2008-08-19 10:09

Excellent composition. I like the relaxed nature of the workers, and the beautiful scenic setting. Also nice to note how far digital photography has come.

Greetings
Kate

zmey (7282) 2008-09-04 8:26

hello alex

love the realism in this one. the composition is well balanced and the note quite informative. hard light to manage though: two of the farmers have their faces in shadow. that does not disrupt the impact though. thanks for sharing this bit of rural samar!

regards,
kristaps

rasto1893 (1810) 2008-09-10 11:51

Hello Alex,
Nice photo, good composition and very nice colours, good view of farmers from Philippines ....
My best regards
Rastislav

pablominto (41690) 2008-09-20 2:57

Hello Alex,

This is a well composed image, a fine documentary with an artistic twist!
The large plains of course simplifies the cultivating of rice, but I have full understanding that manual labour under the burning sun is about as hard as it gets...
The quality seems fine for an early generation of digicam!

Greetings,
Pablo -

BoisBarb (9439) 2008-09-22 10:40

Qualité peut-être moyenne mais cadrage très réussi et belles couleurs
BoisBarb

ekinokswest (2974) 2008-09-25 15:41

I like this creative approach with the effect of the wind but on the other hand I think the frame is too big and plus dont you think there is a bit of lack of neat view on the sky particularly.

touristdidi (8561) 2008-12-03 16:21 [Comment]

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