For a month and a half photographers have struggled to get images that have really captured the devestation that the massive BP oil spill has caused. Mostly due to the fact that the spill occured 50 miles from the shore and any coastal areas it has reached have mostly been inaccessabile to vehicles.
The first image to really hit home on how damaging the effects of the spill have really been was taken by Associated Press photographer Charlie Riedel. Riedel, because of offical efforts to block media access, has like other journalists had to rely mostly on Government Press tours to gain access to affected areas. It was during one of these tours that Riedel broke off from the crowd and spotted a group of pelicans dreched in oil and began to shoot.
“It was on a barrier island off the Louisiana coast that was in the process of being rejuvenated,” Riedel says. “The governor put together the trip to look at several sites. It was me and a handful of TV reporters and cameramen. There were no other still photographers. On the surface, it looked like a mundane thing—basically bulldozers pushing sand around. When we landed, there was a significant amount of oil on the beach. The TV folks, as they do, clustered around the governor for a press conference. I looked up the the beach a few hundred feet, and there was an oiled pelican.”
Aircraft have been made to stay 3,000 feet above the site, making aerial photography difficult, beaches and marshes have been closed off and clean up teams have been told not to communicate with the media. Finally, however, it looks like the effects of the disaster that BP and the authorites have tried to keep out of the public's attention is quite literally hitting home.
