Photographers Blog

His main claim to fame to audiences overseas are his beachside antics. Beyond that, Australia’s conservative opposition leader doesn’t demand a whole lot of our work time.

However, I ended up next to him, underground, 10 kilometers (6 miles) into a coal mine.

Reuters just happened to be writing a piece about Tony Abbott and we write about mining many times every day Down Under. So here was a chance to match this piece while shooting lots of subterranean stock images.

Like all Reuters photographers now and then I am faced with shooting in very low light. This particular mine releases lots of methane gas, the stuff that caused an explosion at Pike River coal mine in New Zealand killing 29 men underground, a tragic story that I covered in November last year. The restrictions one works underground include:

- No flash
- No tripod
- No changing lenses
- No other gear except camera with lens attached
- No spare batteries
- No light sources other than the mine’s supplied head lamp
- No turning your camera on if an unsafe methane reading is detected within 20 meters of you
- No wondering off by yourself
- No leaving the main transit corridors
- And a host of others I can’t remember

As I write 29 men are trapped in a coal mine in New Zealand after a methane explosion at the Pike River coal mine. Sydney based photographer Tim Wimborne is at the scene. His picture of people hugging each other so tightly seems to sum up the growing despair as they cling to the hope that the men are still alive, the moment in the picture seems to go on an eternity.

Family members of miners trapped underground in the Pike River coal mine comfort each other in Greymouth on New Zealand's west coast, after visiting the mine to see rescue preparations November 21, 2010. Efforts to rescue 29 men trapped in a New Zealand coal mine faced more agonizing delays on Sunday when authorities said they would drill a new shaft to test air quality because toxic gases made it too dangerous for rescue teams go in. REUTERS/Tim Wimborne

Two separate disasters in buildings over the last week took over a hundred lives with police taking action against the property owners in both cases. In Shanghai,  Ali Song shooting pictures that not only convey the drama of the fire but also show the scale of the blaze by showing figures dwarfed by the smoke and flames.  The silent upturned faces of onlookers striking a chill in the heart, a mood created by Aly exposing for the highlights allowing the shadow to fall into almost complete darkness.  

Only days after the world watched the 33 Chilean miners emerge from the bowels of the earth, triumphant, an explosion at another mine, half a world away, is making headlines, but on a much smaller scale. The blast in China is reported to have killed 26 miners and trapped 11, with rescue attempts hampered by coal dust. Last year over 2,600 miners died in industrial accidents in China, whose mining industry is considered the deadliest in the world. The access given to the photographer is quite amazing in the circumstances.

A rescuer is seen in a tunnel of the Pingyu No.4 Coal mine in Yuzhou, Henan province October 16, 2010. An explosion in the Chinese coal mine killed at least 20 miners in central Henan Province on Saturday, state media reported. REUTERS/Stringer

Looking at the file from last week I got the sense that Asia seemed strangely calm - maybe the calm before the storm of Super Typhoon Megi that is bearing down on the Philippines.  Winds of over 250 kph are expected along with flooding, landslides and possible injury and damage.  Our team are waiting, poised and ready to jump into action; one of the hardest things to do for photographers is to wait and watch until the danger has passed knowing that safety must come first - no point becoming the story yourself by being injured or worse killed, but always in their minds are the pictures they are missing.