Marinduque Marcopper Photo

Photographer’s Note

Behind the Photo

The lingering memories of the 1996 Marcopper mining disaster on Marinduque Island, where toxic pollution spoiled fishing waters (affecting marine and coral life in the process) and which also caused health problems among local villagers, still casts a long shadow over the entire industry of Mining within the Philippines, we are reminded of this preventable disaster recently, when an Australian Run Mining company had a little Toxic Spill to contain. Gloria (President) has ruled out banning the operations. The Philippines in theory, should have a booming Mining, given that the country has some of the world's biggest under-exploited deposits of copper, gold and to a lesser degree nickel, and commodity prices are at historic highs.

About

Taken at Marcopper's Santa Cruz Mine, this is the view along the old road that sits unrepaired ever since Marcopper packed up everything and left after the Mining Disaster. Nowadays, the effects can be seen, but at a very, very lesser extent. I've snorkelled around each part of Marinduque nearly, and the Marine life is growing and new life is flourishing, but you still see the old effects. Such as the many dead coral's and reef's that still remain, luckily, new coral is forming where the old skeletons remain. A Big change since the 90's.

Photo

*Sharpening a bit
*Played a little with Contrast
-Other Than that and the resize, this image is basically Raw.

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Critiques | Translate

rgarrigus (0) 2008-02-17 1:08

Hi Thomas,

Really good note. This is a nice view with pretty much all the ingredients for a good landscape photograph save possibly one - inspiring light. I like the way you have positioned the shack and I understand why you chose to give the sky such prominence but the strength of the sun this late in the day has given the image an overall blue cast and the upper 2/3 is quite hazy from the atmospherics. The impact your eye saw in the sky is lost in this two-dimensional representation by the limitations of the camera. The best way to improve the image would be to seek a time of day with a bit warmer light and possibly to use a graduated neutral density filter or polarizer to hold detail in the sky. The best time of day will usually be closer to sunrise or sunset depending on the orientation. I did a very quick workshop to give you ideas of what you might do to slightly improve this version in post processing but again the best technique is to not rely on Photoshop and to get it as close to perfect during the shot as you can.

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