Two workers attack a pile of gravel in a small farming village. A day of hard work has just begun. For the vast majority of Chinese, physical labor is a way of life. This picture could not say what it says if I had taken it only an hour later. I wanted to stress the nature of the gravel itself, hard edged, dusty, and heavy. At this hour of the morning, the low light throws each stone into hard relief, providing a texture to this picture that defines the essence of the task at hand. The light also elongates the shadows, and makes the dust raised by the shovel seem to hang in the air. High contrast, high relief, and the low light angle combine here to tell us what this job must feel like.