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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Forty One: Ruins and wrecks: photographing the rusted, busted past > Decay, Devils Island, French Guyana, 2010
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28-DEC-2010

Decay, Devils Island, French Guyana, 2010

This former French penal colony, made famous by the book and subsequent 1973 film “Papillon” with Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman, is off the beaten tourist track, and therefore quite difficult to visit. I was delighted that our cruise ship stopped there for a morning, allowing me wander at will for several hours. The prison has been abandoned for 65 years. I found a derrick rusting away on the shoreline, and I made this closeup image of it, emphasizing its cruel, jagged shape by backlighting it. To me, it represented the character of the old prison itself. I framed it as a diagonal, running precisely from corner to corner, and repeating the original directional flow of the derrick itself. I was able to bring out a bit of the rust in the shadows, contrasting its decay to the vitality of the softly focused green water and weeds in the background.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH2
1/1000s f/9.0 at 61.0mm iso160 hide exif
Full EXIF Info
Date/Time28-Dec-2010 06:59:47
MakePanasonic
ModelDMC-GH2
Flash UsedNo
Focal Length61 mm
Exposure Time1/1000 sec
Aperturef/9
ISO Equivalent160
Exposure Bias-0.66
White Balance
Metering Modemulti spot (3)
JPEG Quality
Exposure Programprogram (2)
Focus Distance

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