Two postcards ago, I featured a farmer who helped harvest the season's rice crop in exchange for a few cavans of rice. When you don't own the land, you need to make a living somehow, and every person we found working in the fields did some uniquely useful work that helped them earn a cut of the harvest.
This week's postcard features another "profession" in the food chain of harvesting rice. These folks are called "taga-bigkis." After someone cuts the rice stalks and lays them on the ground to dry, these folks come along to tie those stalks into bundles and stack them together into significant mounds. Yup, work here is that specialized, and this is the only thing they'll do. They'll make two hundred pesos per day doing this. After all, everyone's gotta eat. Enjoy.
(Pixel-peepers: The afternoon sun was beating down on us, not the best time to be shooting in the fields. But just like these folks who have a job to do, we also need to earn our keepers! One trick I use to get uber saturated photographs at high noon is to slap on a polarizer and set it to maximum polarization. This cancels out all the reflection from the leaves and surrounding foliage, making the colors jump out.)
Where in the world is San Jose, Mindoro?
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For those who've inquired about buying prints of my postcards, you may purchase them directly from master printmaker Arnel Murillo (murilloarnel@yahoo.com), one of the country's foremost fine-art printmakers. Arnel uses archival inks and museum-grade paper to ensure his prints will not fade. You will not be disappointed. (All my images are provided gratis to help showcase the beauty of our country. But if you feel generous, help me uplift the lives of the Children of Payatas. No donation is too big or too small. Get in touch with Fr. Aldrin Suan at aldrinsuan@yahoo.com of the Vincentian Missionaries in the Philippines. As always, thanks and enjoy.)
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