I got nauseous today at the dump for the first time, thought I might throw up at one point, I had to look away and collect myself. The whole thing started when I was photographing the rice pail for a family, the pail was half filled with rice and other things found in the garbage that a father was recycling to feed his family later. I had been photographing the father with his two young sons for maybe 20 minutes as they dug in a big pile of garbage. Both boys were very cute and loved to have their picture taken, they wore old beaten up hats and were about 4 and 6 years old.
I was zooming in and doing a closeup of the food pail and also doing shots of the fathers hands as he dumped cooked rice from dirty plastic bags he found under a big pile of smelly fly covered garbage into the pail. As I was shooting away he found some sort of watery brown milk like stuff in a bag and was unsure whether to include it in the families food. He thought about it for a second then dumped the whole watery/milky bag into the mushy fly covered rice pail. The liquid made a sloshing splat type sound as it hit the rice, the only sound I can think of that compares is when I use an outhouse at a campsite in Canada, it's the sound the urine and fecal matter makes as it falls and hits the waste liquids and solids below.
All along as I was making the photos of the pail of rice and the food being put in it I kept thinking, those little boys will eat this later, my god those little boys are going to eat that shit, it kept going over and over in my mind. The sickly smells, the visuals, then the liquid and the sloshing splat sounds and I almost lost it, I had to turn away take a few steps back and pretend to be photographing some dogs on a nearby hill. In about 2 minutes after I had recovered I returned to photograph the family.
I was zooming in and doing a closeup of the food pail and also doing shots of the fathers hands as he dumped cooked rice from dirty plastic bags he found under a big pile of smelly fly covered garbage into the pail. As I was shooting away he found some sort of watery brown milk like stuff in a bag and was unsure whether to include it in the families food. He thought about it for a second then dumped the whole watery/milky bag into the mushy fly covered rice pail. The liquid made a sloshing splat type sound as it hit the rice, the only sound I can think of that compares is when I use an outhouse at a campsite in Canada, it's the sound the urine and fecal matter makes as it falls and hits the waste liquids and solids below.
All along as I was making the photos of the pail of rice and the food being put in it I kept thinking, those little boys will eat this later, my god those little boys are going to eat that shit, it kept going over and over in my mind. The sickly smells, the visuals, then the liquid and the sloshing splat sounds and I almost lost it, I had to turn away take a few steps back and pretend to be photographing some dogs on a nearby hill. In about 2 minutes after I had recovered I returned to photograph the family.
