This photograph is one of a series of three which won the 2005 United Nations International Photography Competition in honorary mention category.
There were over 170,000 photographs submitted from 140 countries around the world.
The other two photographs are here and here.
This is a sugar mill near Kanchanaburi, Thailand (about a 2 hour drive northwest of Bangkok) and is one of the major sugar cane regions of the country. This area, around Kanchanaburi, is probably most famously known from the movie The Bridge Over the River Kwai.
Never in my life have I been more inspired by a subject than when I saw this sugar mill. Driving by, I literally slammed on the brakes and backed up. It was (and is) exactly what I love shooting — the juggernaut of industry: a horrible yet irresistible force, and this epitomized all of that and more.
For the next month, I got up at 3 in the morning every weekend in order to arrive and get set up by dawn.
