[LRflex] Concentration

This,should be the last of the mine shots, from last Friday.
After the ore is mined, it must be milled down to a powder and then "concentrated" to about 40% copper. The dried concentrate is then shipped out, for refining.
Photographing the SAG & Ball mills proved almost impossible, at least in colour. The lighting used is one that I've found impossible to correct. You can see it filtering through from the far left, in the shot below.
The lighting on the concentration side is a more "normal" mercury vapour type. Difficult, but not impossible to work with.
Both sides suffer from tremendous vibration from the mills. I found a tripod useless, for the catwalks vibrated unbelievably! It proved better to hand hold and here the in-body IS of the Oly E3 proved invaluable! The video crews found it impossible to work without a SteadiCam. (Exposure was 1/50th - f3.5 - ISO 1250.
The noise was also unbelievably loud, even though we had good quality ear protection. However, not even a Leica could do anything about that! (Normal sound levels in the mill are around 94db ... and in spots it gets quite loud!)
In this shot, the slurry is "floated" (in what, they didn't say) to separate the copper, in what is the world's third largest concentrating facility. 

http://www.furnfeather.net/Temps/Concentration.htm
Sorry Ted... I couldn't shoot "from the shadow side", as the only shadows were from the overhead lighting!
If anyone's interested: a brief overview of the HVC operation is at: http://www.mining-technology.com/projects/highland/ 

Comments, criticism welcomed, as always.

Cheers!

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David Young,
Logan Lake, CANADA

Limited Edition Prints at: www.furnfeather.net
Personal Web-site at: www.main.furnfeather.net
Stock Photography at: http://tinyurl.com/2amll4

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