Leça Refinery
written by pedrofelix
on April 17th, 2009
, 4 comments
(8 votes)
I’ve always felt some kind of attraction for industrial landscapes. Not that I think they are the most beautiful things on earth, cuz they’re not. In fact sometimes I think they’re the ugliest, but at same time I feel astonished by the way we built this kind of things. When I look at a seaport, airport or a major factory it’s impossible for me to think how they were made.
How many sweat, tears, imagination, engineering, money, faith, and sometimes deaths, these took to be constructed? And now how many people work there? Producing our cars, plains, mobile phones, trains, ships, etc. Yeah, we taking our factories to a global scale: Bigger and faster.
Leça da Palmeira refinery, have all of this. It’s huge (at Portugal scale). And I’m always attracted to her. I love her at night, with the lights covering all towers; and then you can see the smoke that comes from the fire at the end of the towers… For me it’s perfect for very long exposures.
At daytime, towers are painted in red and white stripes, and it’s the higher structure in the surrenders so you can see it from very far. It’s few meters from the beach; and it’s funny how the nature lives along side with a refinery, and let me be honest it’s not a good relationship. Some accidents with leaks from the pipelines had occur in past.
For me it’s a paradox; I love her and I hate her. I love taking pictures but I wish it would just disappear.
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