Paradise Lost!

Rio das Ostras, 2001
photographed by Armando Rozário

Dear Editor/Webmaster,

Here is a photo which can not br repeated today! It was taken in 2001, after sunset at about 7 PM, near the small bridge which crosses Rio das Ostras, in the state of Rio de Janeiro (between Cabo Frio and Macaé).

Every evening hundreds of herons come to rest, perched on the branches of the mangroves which are near the riverbanks. This beautiful scene could be seen every evening as the herons flock to their resting ground, to sleep. Atdawn, early in the morning, they wake up, make a lot of noise and fly off to their hunting grounds in the Campos Basin area.

Why have the herons changed their habits? One of the reasons may be because of the polluted river, the other one, which ismore plausible ....is the construction of a huge new bridge across the tiny river. The big construction job is being undertaken right now, the bridge runs rightbeside the margins of the mangroves!

The flora and fauna blended perfectly in this photo, today the fauna is missing, and the flora is alsosuffering the side effect of the engineering job. Is there a solution?

Let's talk about the photo. Istepped off the bus which was taking me from Macaé to Rio das Ostras. I was going to visit my friend Joel Barcellos, but when I saw hundreds of birds flocking to restnear the mangroves, I decided to document the scene.

I used a simple 35mm autofocus camera, theYashica T-3, equipped with a Carl Zeiss 35 mm wide angle lens. I used Fujicolor negative film. The exposure was automatic, it was calculated by the camera's CPU! The film was developed in a minilab and enlarged to the 4x6" format. This image was scanned directly from the postcard sized print and it produced a file of 2472 x 1798 Pixels.

Thebranches of a tree near the highway served as a frame for this "environmental" portrait! In the background you can see the sillhouette of one of Brazil's extinct volcanoes, Morro de São João.

The original snapshot was scanned by "hp scanjet 3570c" and the result is being e-mailed to the editor of " GRINGOES.COM ".

This is one of a series of "My Picture Stories"

Armando Rozário - Cabo Frio, Oct. 23, 2005