Enel Power Station Genoa

As a last activity on the Italian leg of the quit coal tour, my esteemed colleagues at Greenpeace decided to do a banner hanging and paint job on Enel's coal-fired power station in Genoa. I spent several days scouting locations and vantage points from where to shoot the thing. Funnily enough, the pictures taken during the scouting are dearer to me than the ones shot on the day... but decide for yourselves...

Pirate ship shenanigans

First evening in the port of Genoa, a huge pirate ship on display, some drinks and we just couldn't resist...

Here's our object of desire by daytime...

Nighttime visitations

This morning I documented Greenpeace activists shutting down the coal supply to a power plant in Porto Torres, Sardinia. There is something fascinating about huge, dirty industrial sites at night, and especially thrilling when you know that there is a limited amount of time available to get out before being arrested. So most of these shots happened under cover of darkness whilst we were running around on mountains of dusty, soft coal and huge pieces of machinery. Needless to say, I found it exciting and visually very stimulating. A few of my selection here:

Isla de Giglio

En route to Sardinia, we went to anchor for a night at the beautiful small island of Giglio. Peace and tranquility ruled the moods, and I topped it off by sleeping under a full canopy of bright stars. Old romantic fool, me... ;-)

Back to sea

I spent less than 8 hours in London, arriving late one night, and leaving very early the next morning before sunrise. Oddly enough, I am now on the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise and we're continuing our campaign to quit coal. There are many things on the menu, but for now a few activists got creative and painted a quayside from their inflatable boat.

Autumn colours

Back from Spain, I spent a few days at my Czech getaway. There wasn't much time, but just enough to get a few frames of the colours of autumn, my favourite season.

Quit coal action

After this all-nighter, I can confidently say that this job beats going to the office any day. The Greenpeace action during which climbers boarded the cargo ship Windsor Adventure from inflatable boats and later painted it's sides was by far the most challenging assignment in a long while.

We were several miles off the coast of northern Spain near Gijon and it was a dark, dark night but with relatively good weather. Most of the photos happened in around 2 a.m. and thus taking pictures with the camera set to maximum ISO, aperture wide open, long shutter speeds and our boat rocking several metres up and down was challenging, if not borderline impossible. But need I say it? I loved it! I also love the results, very much, which were hard-gained, and I just have to share them with you...

Painting with Light

Arrived in supposedly sunny Spain and it's overcast and raining. Went straight from the airport to a site where we test a high-powered beam projector and long exposures for our planned projections onto the cooling towers of As Pontes power station. The tests go well and we settle on a choice of colours for the notoriosly difficult mixed-lighting conditions at industrial sites at night. After some scouting of the site of tomorrow's projections, I get to bed in the early morning hours.


The next day, things go according to plan - we set up the generator, project, click and pack it in within a few hours. I am particularly impressed with the projector which beams our message from a distance of around 1 kilometre. My favourite pictures are below, and here's the link on the Greenpeace site.