My entry to the APA/NY (Advertising Photographers of America) juried "Tell Us A Story" competition was awarded the Grand Prize in the Professional category at Tuesday night's exhibition and fundraising event held at Calumet's HP Gallery in New York City."
IMAGE HISTORY:
I was on vacation this year and, while once having bagged roadside garbage on the first-ever Earth Day, I wasn't really looking to get anything environmentally controversial. It's just an isolated beach (gee, I wonder why?) that I'd been to on trips past and where the sand & waters are beautiful . . . as long as you don't look the wrong way. I had my camera out as there are some old chaise lounges on the beach that I thought would make for some nice photos when all of a sudden I noticed the refinery started venting. As I mentionted I'd been to this beach before and while there's always a dull haze of pollution escaping the smokestacks (in the right of the photo) I had never seen anything like this happen before. Because of the swimmers in the foreground I immediately recognized a powerful image and scrambled, stumbled, bumbled, rushed and hurried for my camera bag in order to change lenses. It actually was over quite quickly: the venting was short and the winds were swift. But it was still a terribly dramatic expulsion of pollutants into the atmosphere.
"I won't identify the island because I really want to get back on it . My suspicion is that the Tourist Board wouldn't exactly take too kindly to my releasing an image that runs quite counter to that presented in their travel brochures. Sad but true, I think that far from enlightening people and opening minds, an image like this will more likely bring about more restrictions and censorship. And in the larger context I don't think it really matters EXACTLY where this is. It's on the Planet Earth. That's probably all that needs to be said right now.
