I have a job for you. I require some great photographs to be taken in a very specific studio. However, there are a few small issues with this studio.
The heating is stuck on high so it’s a pretty constant 34 degrees C.
The humidifier is also malfunctioning so humidity is around 100% in there. You may find your camera and lenses fogging up to the point of water dripping off them. In fact there’s water running pretty much everywhere.
There’s a great sound system in the studio but unfortunately someone got a copy of “Pneumatic Drills Vol 2” stuck in the player, and that can’t be turned off. Also the volume knob broke off and it’s set at an earsplitting level.
Oh, did I mention that the studio floor consists of large, razor sharp broken rocks? Or that the whole studio slopes at thirty degrees?
Also, I’m afraid the lights have tripped and no one can find the breaker.
Sorry, one more thing. The height of the whole studio is just over one meter, meaning you’ll need to crawl up and down it’s 30 degree slope over those broken rocks on your hands and knees in the dark.
Our health and safety department insist you wear heavy steel toe-capped gum boots, hard hat, headlamp with a cable trailing to a battery pack, inflexible knee guards that like to bite your shins, thick overalls, safety glasses and gloves. And don’t forget your heavy emergency oxygen pack, which we require you to wear in this studio at all times.
Apologies for the parking arrangements, but you will need to walk about two kilometers carrying all your photographic equipment by hand. Sorry, but using a trolley for all your gear won’t be possible as the path is very uneven and often strewn with broken rock. It wouldn’t help you on the last 70 meters anyway as the studio entrance is a very steep set of uneven, broken and subsiding steps interspersed with slopes, that you will need to haul yourself up by chain. Please be very careful on this part, a water pipe broke and you’ll be climbing through a small river which makes the going very slippery.
Put all of that a few kilometers underground and that’s pretty much what mining photography looks like, especially in the stopes (areas where the actual reef is extracted)
But seriously, this is just one part of our tightly specialised expertise and being as we love what we do we look on these conditions as a challenge. The harder it is, the more of an achievement it feels like to come back with great images.
And after all, it’s free gym!
View our mining photography portfolio here
Geoff Brown is one of the few photographers in South Africa with many years of experience in photographing underground mining operations and equipment. Contact him on planetkb@global.co.za should your organisation need a professional above- and below-ground mining photographer .